The expanding role of the military in Mexico and militarisation of public security has been a key feature of the last four years under the government led by President Andrés López Obrador, but it has been deeply controversial. On 7 March The New York Times ran a piece entitled “Spying by Mexico’s Armed Forces Brings Fears of a ‘Military State’”, citing documents from an investigative report published last October alleging that the armed forces used Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware programme developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, to spy on two journalists and a human rights defender (HRD) between 2019 and 2021 despite reassurances from López Obrador that spying would never take place under his government [WR-22-40]. The HRD in the report is Raymundo Ramos, who just last week denounced the extrajudicial killings of five youths by an army patrol.
The five youths were shot dead by an army patrol in Nuevo Laredo in the northern state of Tamaulipas on 26 February. The army account of the incident is that the youths were driving in a pick-up truck with neither lights nor licence plates that sped away upon seeing the patrol, with soldiers opening fire after hearing a subsequent loud bang. Relatives of the victims were joined by local residents in then setting upon the soldiers as they endeavoured to tow the truck away, accusing them of having fired indiscriminately at unarmed youths returning from a night club. The soldiers fired shots into the air in order to disperse the crowd.
The Nuevo Laredo human rights committee filed a complaint with federal prosecutors. “The Mexican army is out of control. Prosecutors have to clear up what happened, and the president must stop protecting the soldiers,” Ramos, the head of the committee, said. Nuevo Laredo has a history of drug-related violence, with the Cártel del Noreste (CDN), an offshoot of the old Zetas drug trafficking organisation (DTO), now the dominant criminal group.
Soldiers and marines have come under fire from members of the CDN. Last year staffing levels at the US consulate in Nuevo Laredo were reduced over concerns of an upsurge in violence after the capture of Juan Gerardo ‘El Huevo’ Treviño, the leader of the cartel. Relations between residents and the military have been tense, with 30 marines still under investigation for the ‘disappearance’ of civilians during 2014-2018. Ramos has investigated a number of the killings and disappearances.
In his morning press conference on 1 March, President López Obrador said various investigations had been opened by the attorney general’s office (FGR), the military prosecutor, and the national human rights commission (CNDH). He compared the situation to army involvement in 2014 during the previous administration, in the notorious and unsolved kidnapping of 43 student teachers in Ayotzinapa, Iguala, in the south-western state of Guerrero.
“It is best to clarify things,” he said. “I’m thinking of what sadly happened in Iguala with the young people from Ayotzinapa. Why hide things? That was a crime and an error. They should have told the truth and punished those responsible.” Given the military’s alleged use of Pegasus to spy on and discredit Ramos, it appears things are still being hidden. It was noteworthy that the very first question put to López Obrador during the press conference was not about the killings themselves but unfounded accusations of links between Ramos and DTOs.
Raymundo Ramos
The first question put to President López Obrador at his press conference was from Carlos Domínguez, who runs the pro-government online media outlet Nación 14, who claimed Raymundo Ramos worked for the Cártel del Noreste, playing a taped intercept of a phone call purportedly between Ramos and a supposed drug trafficker. “This is clearly a response by Sedena [the defence ministry],” Ramso claimed. “They are using the morning press briefing to smear me and to discredit the victims’ complaint,” he added.