Miguel Concha
Militarization
This coming Tuesday there will be a public event of "hits of cartels" that
is a continuation of the Forum on Public Security and Human Rights, that
was carried out the past October 18 in the Jose Marti Auditorium.
Its purpose will be that of fulfilling the proposals and agreements that
emanated from that Forum, to give impulse to the analysis and propaganda
on the problems of public safety, and which is outlined as of the approval
of the new Law against Organized Crime and the increase of the military
presence in different regions of the country and in the different planes
of the national life.
We will speak now on the militarization.
Four aspects of what is happening nationally reveal that a process of
militarization is developing all along the length and width of the
country:
the deployment of soldiers in cities, towns, highways and mountainous
areas; the transfer of public safety functions to the hands of Army
officers;
the increase of expenditures for armament, equipment, transportation and
training; and, finally, the increase in training troops and officials in
foreign military schools or on the part of foreign military personnel in
national territory.
With respect to first of the indicators that we mention, which is the most
obvious, it must be emphasized that according to journalistic information
that we have obtained, there are at least 20 federative entities [STATES?
AGENCIES?] in which is observed concern about movement of regular military
troops.
And we said that it is of concern because in a few of the cases the
reasons for such deployment have been explained, and in many of them, on
the contrary, the statements of the military leaders negate the existence
of valid, legal reasons for such mobilization.
In effect, some commands have informed the press that in their respective
regions guerrillas and traffic in armament do not exist, and that the
criminal incidence is due to the presence of gangs.
That the troops deployment is purely for training.
Then, what is the legal, constitutional basis for the soldiers' actions?
How can they explain the detentions, the CATEOS, the burning of 15
indigenous houses in Santa Cruz Yucucani, in the style of the
counterinsurgency tactics of "scorched earth?"
In relationship to the movement of the authority functions and civil
institutions into military hands, the most known action is the one which
was produced in the Public Security Secretariat of the capital of the
country, with the arrival of more than a hundred officers that occupied
the posts of leadership and operative commands of the corporation.
But one should not lose sight of the fact that they have been produced
other takeovers of importance, such as the concentration in hands of the
Sedena of the commands and agents of the federal Public Ministry in
Chihuahua, through military prosecutors; the militarization of the police
in New Laredo, Tamps., "to stop crime and violence," and others in the
same style.
On the increase of the expenditures for armament, equipment,
transportation and training, according to a published report by the
Federation of American Scientists, between 1984 and 1993, Mexico obtained
ten times more US armament than it accumulated it between 1950 and 1983.
More than 400 million dollars were spent on that time on military
equipment, weapons and ammunitions.
Without including the "gifts" that the US Congress approved to reinforce
the Mexican military forces, among which are several dozens of airplanes,
neither all the equipment for troops transportation manufactured in Europe
an unknown number of TANQUETAS [tanker ships?], that have entered the
country by the port of Veracruz.
Therefore what is done to increase training of troops and officials, and
to the agreements establishment between the armed forces of Mexico and
United States for the cooperation and the accomplishment of joint
maneuvers, it is no longer news that they have opened the military schools
of the country of the north to Mexican officers.
What indeed is new is the information that Israeli soldiers are found
giving training to policemen from Jalisco.
Because of this we consider that the above mentioned campaign is of great
importance since, as Lorenzo Meyer says, "it takes work to remove the Army
from its quarters, but it takes more work to put them back in again."
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NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- NAP
A PRESS DEDICATED TO HUMAN RIGHTS
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NAP is an effort by civil society
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Director: Roger Maldonado
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