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Special Report - The military as police: a balance sheet (ISSN 17414474)
Relying on Carabineros to face two threats
Chile has been responding to two internal security threats — by radical Mapuche activists in the south of the country and by anarchist groups mainly in the Santiago metropolitan area — with its now civilian controlled paramilitary police force, the Carabineros (who during the Pinochet era had been elevated to the status of fourth armed force). The Mapuche radicals have confined their actions to arson attacks, mainly against logging companies in territories they claim as ancestral lands, and occasional ambushes of Carabineros. The anarchist groups have concentrated on bombing attacks, with explosive or incendiary devices, against banks and public buildings, particularly police premises.
- Executive summary
- Under Peña Nieto the military remain in the field
- Extensive use of the military on two fronts
- More troops deployed as violence rebounds after ‘truce’
- Level of violence declines but is still high
- New special units to bolster mass troop deployment
- President gets free hand to deploy military
- One state of emergency after another
- Relying on Carabineros to face two threats
- Military kept out of internal security
- Almost complete militarisation
- Allowing ‘preventive’ use of armed forces
- Trying to assess effects