Mexico strengthens militarization amid human rights fears and Macaw hacking

First modification: 10/12/2022 – 15:50Last modification: 10/12/2022 – 15:48

The constitutional reform occurs in the midst of a scandal caused by the enormous leak of classified military information perpetrated by the group of hackers Guacamaya, which is shaking several Latin American countries.

In Mexico, where the volume of leaks is one of the highest, it has triggered an avalanche of journalistic denunciations that reveal the influence of the military in the current Administration.

The new law consolidates the leading role that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given to the Armed Forces, entrusting them with public security but also with tasks such as the construction of multimillion-dollar infrastructure works.

This civic-military alliance worries defenders of victims such as Vidulfo Rosales, lawyer for relatives of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school, whose forced disappearance in September 2014 constitutes one of the most heinous crimes in recent Mexican history.

The Army “is letting its power be felt, before which the civil authority is succumbing, and especially the president today who has strategic agreements with the armed forces,” he told AFP.

military pressure

Rosales alludes to the setback caused by the cancellation, last month, of most of the arrest warrants that a special prosecutor’s office investigating the case had obtained in August against 20 officers and soldiers allegedly involved in the crime.

The measure, which reduced the number of soldiers required by the Justice to five, was endorsed by López Obrador and triggered the resignation of special prosecutor Omar Gómez.

Rosales lamented that the president stated that the arrests sought to discredit the Army and provoke “a rebellion” in its ranks.

The lawyer points out that López Obrador’s position, which maintains the resolution of the case as one of his 100 government commitments, shows that his pact with the Armed Forces for security and construction has prevailed over the cause of the students.

“All of this is being left to the Army and obviously given that commitment and given the pressure that (the military) are exerting, I think the government is taking a step backwards in the Ayotzinapa case,” Rosales said.

López Obrador now assumes a closed defense of the institution, according to analysts, which implies clearing it of accusations about its participation in Ayotzinapa, or minimizing the leaks of information that the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) suffered at the hands of Guacamaya.

Macaw Effect

Journalistic investigations arising from the hack denounce that Sedena would have spied on government opponents, while a leaked letter shows that its head, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, pleaded with López Obrador for one of the officers linked to Ayotzinapa.

Other documents indicate that the Army would have drawn up the proposals for constitutional reform that ended up becoming a law that Congress approved in September, and that gave it control of the National Guard, a corporation that the president created to assume public security, promising that it would have civilian command.

The leaks also prove that López Obrador accepted a proposal from the uniformed men to create a commercial airline and manage some airports, information that the president confirmed.

“They are returning us to nineteenth-century states where political power and military power are strongly united, we are seeing the approach to a civic-military pact to govern,” warned analyst Gibrán Ramírez, on television station ‘Milenio’.

Despite the warnings, Rosales acknowledges that it is difficult to confront López Obrador because he maintains “legitimacy and a high degree of popular approval”, around 60%, according to various surveys.

For this reason, he believes that the impunity of the military will persist, endorsed by the president.

“We believe that (López Obrador) has already changed his position, that there is no longer a commitment, there will be no more in the Ayotzinapa case,” he concludes.