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Special Report - The military as police: a balance sheet (ISSN 17414474)
Trying to assess effects
Gauging the effect to resorting to the military to confront internal security threats is, to put it mildly, difficult. There are no readily available indicators that can tell the whole story. The one most usually cited to illustrate the level of criminal violence which these deployments are meant to lower is intentional homicide. Overall intentional homicide data do not distinguish homicides attributable to organised crime from the rest — and there is no consensus on how to define organised crime (for instance, where do the maras fit, or the gangs born of the disruption of the big cartels?). To complicate matters further, factors such as Mexico’s ‘disappeared’ and the discovery of bodies in clandestine burial pits are not taken into consideration in tallying fatalities attributable to organised crime.
- 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