Paper: New law governing public safety and internal security is long overdue in Mexico

A new law governing public safety and internal security is long overdue in Mexico, according to an issue brief from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. This is most apparent in the controversial role of the armed forces in the country’s public safety and internal security fields, the brief’s authors said.

Credit: shutterstock.com/Rice University

“Mexican Armed Forces and Security in Mexico” proposes a conceptual clarification of the role of the agents for public safety and internal safety in the country as the basis for any new law. The paper was co-authored by Tony Payan, the Françoise and Edward Djerejian Fellow for Mexico Studies at the Baker Institute and director of the institute’s Mexico Center, and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, associate professor in the Department of Public Affairs and Security Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

For nearly 40 years now, the Mexican armed forces have been engaged in tasks that are more closely aligned with public safety than national security, the authors said. Mexico’s armed forces have been asked to contribute to the national well-being through a wide range of activities, such as dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters, running health campaigns, managing anti-hunger facilities, safeguarding national strategic facilities, patrolling Mexico’s exclusive economic zones and helping in public safety and security operations, particularly against organized crime. “This is a broad agenda for a relatively small military – around 270,000 active personnel,” the authors wrote.

“The Mexican armed forces have a long tradition of loyalty to the government, and their participation in what they call ‘solidary and subsidiary activities’ is largely motivated by their sense of duty,” the authors wrote. “When they have been called to act, they have done so with little resistance. But the Mexican public is increasingly uneasy with the armed forces’ role and participation in security, particularly because they operate in a regulatory limbo and have recently been accused of human rights abuses, abductions, torture, forced disappearances and sexual assaults.”

The authors said the Mexican armed forces require a law that serves multiple purposes: reframes and modernizes the concepts of public safety, internal security and national defense; clarifies the role, conditions, terms and limits of the armed forces’ engagements; and establishes mechanisms to hold them accountable. “Without a new law, Mexico’s armed forces will continue to come into contact with the civilian population without an understanding of their civil and political rights,” the authors wrote.

“(The Mexican) Congress must act soon,” the authors concluded. “The failure to enact legislation will have detrimental consequences for both the armed forces and Mexico’s fragile democracy.”