When he was a candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized the role of the military in the war against drug trafficking and promised to get them off the streets of Mexico. But in the course of his management he has only given them more power. In 2019 he eliminated the Federal Police and in its replacement created the National Guard, which was made up of 80 percent by the military. And last August he reported that the new body dedicated to fighting crime would no longer be under civilian command and would go to the Ministry of Defense.
This last measure, which has not yet materialized, is just one of many that have increased the power and influence of the military in the public management of that country. In fact, Lopez Obrador It has even entrusted them with the development of constructions and the subsequent administration of some works.
The case of Mexico is just one example. In recent years, in some Latin American governments there has been a tendency to increase the economic and social power of the military, by attributing functions other than defense to them.
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In Cuba and Venezuela they manage the most important sectors of the economy. In Brazil, active and retired military have led ministries. In El Salvador, the expansion of the functions of the armed forces contradicts what is established in the laws of that State. The growing role of the military in Latin America is dangerous for the good performance of the states and democracies of the region.
Three reasons
Rut Diamint, an expert in regional security and civil-military relations, summarizes in three the reasons that cause a greater influence of the military in the political power of the region.
The first responds to the fact that, after the dictatorships, the transformation of the role of the military to the democratic model was incomplete: “Above all, political decision was lacking. It involved a rather uncomfortable series of processes, including the trial of the military that most governments did not want to do because they felt the governments were weak or because they had fear of uprisings”, says Diamond.
The second comes from the inability of civil institutions, for example, to combat organized crime and control society during the pandemic, shortcomings that the armed forces came in to fill.
And the third reason, for Diamint, is the partisan use of this institution. “Most of the rulers, both from the right and from the left, with difficulties to be re-elected, they begin to trust the armed forces as a support for their own government in exchange for prerogatives, benefits, prizes, resources…”.
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Military power has been transformed. Its protagonism does nothing but grow, but it must be taken into account that the forms are different from the times of the dictatorships. “There are no military coups, what there is is a very direct link to political decision-making,” says Diamint.
Román Ortiz, principal analyst at the Center for International Security at the Francisco de Vitoria University, agrees: “There are two nuances that I think are important. First, this seizure of spaces of the armed forces within the State increases influence, but it does not necessarily mean that it automatically leads to a coup d’état. Point number two is that this growth in the role of the armed forces is also driven by civilian politicians who seek to replace the weaknesses they have within their political base with the support of the military.”
That there is no threat of coups does not necessarily mean good news for democracy or for state operations. Certainly, the armed forces have the structure and logistics to deal with problems that go beyond many Latin American governments. But the expansion of functions is not always justified, much less convenient.
Ortiz explains that when the armed forces are involved in activities that have nothing to do with their corresponding tasks, they lose their ability to properly fulfill their security and defense function. In addition, their lack of experience in non-military matters does not guarantee good management and can contribute to weakening the functioning of the State.
The expert also points out that this expansion of functions can become very toxic for civil-military relations.
Trend, not norm
For Ortiz, the Mexican case is a clear example. Although he justifies the military intervention in the fight against organized crime in that country, due to the enormous power of some cartels, he warns: “It does not have so much to do with the military having a greater role, but rather that the president eliminated the civilian component to do tasks at the federal level. So the military now have more weight in public security because the Federal Police no longer exists.” In 2021, just as a retired Army general was appointed president of Petrobras, the huge Brazilian state oil company, another 92 members of the armed forces held management positions in state companies, according to Fhola de S. Paulo.
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In 2022, President Jair Bolsonaro called on them to guarantee the transparency of the recently held elections through a parallel vote count. “The Army is on our side,” he said. Bolsonaro at the formal launch of his last candidacy for re-election, in July. A statement considered very worrying for a president-candidate who thus called into question the respected Brazilian electoral organization.
In El Salvador, the president Nayib Bukele it has also given more resources and power to the armed forces, even against the constitution and the peace agreement that ended the civil war in the 1990s.
Many point out in this sense that the president took over the Legislative Assembly in February 2020 accompanied by the military and police to force the opponents to approve a budget to strengthen their Territorial Control Plan. This is the clearest example of the politicization of the armed forces in El Salvador, but it has not been the only one.
Bukele also used them to impose quarantine in times of covid-19, he has increased the military budget by 76.8 percent since 2019 and promised to double the number of troops.
The phenomenon of military protagonism in Latin America has nuances in each of the States of the region. “I think that the three countries that have made the strongest attempt and that have worked best for them in separating defense from public security issues are Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. In Chile it was very difficult because the armed forces maintained not only power, but prestige, something that did not happen in Argentina or Uruguay. So the task of removing him from political power and direct relationship with society was much more difficult”, explains Diamint.
For Ortiz, there is an evident politicization of the armed forces in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, but he warns that it is not comparable with other countries, because these nations cannot be considered democratic. In the others, he explains that the power that the military and its impact on the management of the State it will depend on how strong the democratic institutions are. In some cases, he thinks, the power given to the military may be reversible.
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However, he points out: “I think Bukele is a good example of how things don’t go into reverse, but they don’t because the democratic institutionality in El Salvador was in decline, it was very weak and he has finished dismantling it. In a somewhat new way: by using the security problem in that country to increase a militarization of public security, the use of completely arbitrary systems to carry out mass arrests without any judicial guarantee and end freedoms.”
However, it underlines the difference with what was seen in Latin America in the seventies and eighties. “It is not the Salvadoran military who have a political project, let’s say, and then they occupy the can, but it is a civilian politician who brings in the military to use them in his strategy to perpetuate himself in power”. A big difference.
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GRISHA VERA
CONNECTS (**)
* Member of the editorial board of Connectas and the #ConnectasHub. She was coordinator and investigative reporter for El Pitazo, an independent Venezuelan media outlet. She participated in the transnational investigations #Petrofraude and Migrant Children.
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