Trying to combat rampant police corruption, President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon increasingly has turned to the military, putting generals in top positions previously held by civilians and giving soldiers greater responsibility in the war on drugs.
Zedillo’s moves have drawn praise from some quarters, including some civilian U.S. government officials. But critics, among them military affairs experts in the U.S., are cognizant of the oppressive role the army has played throughout history in Latin America, and fear the shift in policy can only lead to abuses of power.
“It’s easy to bring them (the military) into the political arena,” said Donald Schulz, a professor at the U.S. Army War College. “It may not be so easy to get them out.”
Beyond that, human rights activists, members of opposition political parties and even guerrilla groups fear that with national elections coming, Zedillo is flaunting the military’s presence in public to silence dissent, a charge that Zedillo’s administration dismisses as “completely unfounded.”
Since taking office in late 1994, Zedillo has installed generals to lead the federal drug agency, the federal judicial police and the Mexico City police department. These generals, in turn, have placed their cronies in key management jobs.
Although the appointments make some people nervous, officials in Mexico and the U.S. say Zedillo, who promised during his campaign to battle corruption, really didn’t have a choice, given the unbridled corruption of the local, state and federal police.
“We understand we have to reform the institutions that provide security to the citizenry . . . and the military has proven very reliable,” said a government official. “When it comes to honesty, they are unmatched in Mexico.”
Nonetheless, critics are concerned that the allure of drug money will corrupt the armed forces. In February, the nation’s drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was arrested on charges of protecting one of Mexico’s most powerful traffickers in exchange for bribes. Gutierrez had been on the job two months.
Officials acknowledge the potential for corruption in the armed forces concerns them, considering that the take from drug trafficking in Mexico is estimated as high as $30 billion a year.
“That is our biggest worry and our biggest risk, that the prestige of the military will be lost,” said Gen. Enrique Salgado, a 43-year military veteran whom Zedillo named Mexico City police chief last June.
The defense minister, Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, is obsessed with maintaining an honest military, officials say, and the training soldiers receive instills discipline and the values of honor and patriotism.
These officials also cite the arrest of Gutierrez, seeing it as a reminder for military personnel that no one is above the law.
Schulz, a professor at the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute in Carlisle, Pa., said that while the Mexican military generally has a clean image, he sees danger in the way the Zedillo administration has been deploying the troops.
In the past, the Mexican military, one of the smallest in Latin America with 180,000 soldiers, mostly conducted disaster-relief programs and worked to eradicate drug crops, including fields of opium poppies and marijuana. Now, not only is it enforcing national security policy, but it is defining policy as well, he said.
With their increasing role in law enforcement, military officials have gained political clout. According to the weekly magazine Proceso, the military in 1995 saw its budget jump by 44 percent.
Despite public disclaimers, the budget increase leaves the military indebted to the ruling party, Schulz said, and just the fact that soldiers are more visible on the street intimidates the political opposition.
The president’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has run Mexico for 70 years, but it faces some of the stiffest competition in its history in national elections in July.
According to some polls, opposition parties seem poised to make appreciable gains, including possibly winning the coveted mayor’s office in the capital.
Zedillo’s allies say the notion that he is using the military to scare people is sheer nonsense. As for the military budget, they say, it was minuscule to begin with.
A top presidential aide emphasized that the military’s role in law enforcement is temporary, and that once the administration achieves its goal of improving the civilian police, the military will pull out.
“I see a great darkness and unknown that Mexico is moving into,” Schulz said. “The idea is to return law enforcement back to the civilians, but first you have to build strong, confident, honest police and judicial institutions, and Mexico has never been able to do that.”
The signs of militarization are everywhere, from key drug routes near Tijuana and Chihuahua on the U.S. border, to the crime-plagued streets of Mexico City and the guerrilla-occupied states of Chiapas and Guerrero in the south.
Soldiers are replacing the notoriously corrupt federal judicial police, who are responsible for drug investigations, and in Mexico City, soldiers are replacing civilian police officers while the officers attend police training. Last month, about 2,500 soldiers moved into the capital’s most dangerous neighborhood, Iztapalapa, on the southeast side.
Neighborhood residents so far have nothing but praise for the soldiers.
“I feel safer,” said Natalia Fernandez, 36, the mother of three children. “They are more on top of what’s happening.”
Francisco Xochicale, 75, a former police officer and soldier, said the difference between soldiers and police is soldiers are disciplined. “In the military,” he said, “they show you how to be a gentleman, not a thief.”
