End of preview - This article contains approximately 184 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
Back
Special Report - The military as police: a balance sheet (ISSN 17414474)
Allowing ‘preventive’ use of armed forces
Ecuador’s national assembly approved in May this year an amendment to the 2009 public and state security law which authorises the armed forces, ‘for the purpose of precautelar (the word means prevent or avoid risks) internal protection, the maintenance and control of public order in citizen security, to support in a complementary manner the operations that in this matter are of the competence of the national police.’ Coordination of military intervention in ‘citizen security’ operations is entrusted to the ministers of defence and interior.
- 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