A major storm has broken over the recent announcement that the chief prosecutor's office was offering a reward for more than 30 army deserters, mainly officers, who had switched jobs to become hitmen for a drugs cartel. On the one hand, the military have been arguing that they are committed to a major purge of wrongdoers; on the other, attention has been drawn to the huge scale of desertion from the military.
Cleaning house. The defence ministry has come out with a report highlighting that it has conducted 299 courts-martial since President Vicente Fox came to office in December 2000. Of this total, 21 dealt with cases of drug trafficking, 33 with homicide, 26 with fraud and embezzlement and 3 with cases of 'abuse of authority causing death'. Guilty verdicts were handed down in 210 of the trials.
The defence ministry notes that it has 30,000 members of the military assigned to counternarcotics tasks, and that since 2000 its successes had 'denied to organised crime' more than M$167bn (US$15.9bn).
Desertions. The other side of the story is the ministry's admission that over the past three years there have been 48,407 desertions from the army and the air force -a number equivalent to 27% of the total strength of the two services.
Some members of the military say that this is partly due to the high 'rotation' of military personnel: every year the army and air force jointly induct 79,248 recruits. This combines with low pay and the risk and temptaions attached to counternarcotics operations.
Not yet Colombia. Further investigations into the activities of the former military men now working for the Gulf cartel have uncovered a clandestine communications network in Tamaulipas, used to intercept communications between government agencies.
Investigators seized recording devices and lists of government officials' names, including 182 identified as receiving bribes.
Despite the impressive scope of this organisation, procurator-general Rafael Macedo de la Concha has come out strongly against media claims that Mexico is becoming 'Colombianised'.
For this to happen, he said, 'we would have to be facing an absence of authority and a lack of control over areas of territory by the state, which is not the case. The only aspect in which there might be some likeness with that South American country is the presence of armed groups of outlaws.'
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