AMLO Proposes New National Guard

October 2 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre when student protestors were shot and imprisoned by the Mexican army. During a ceremony of remembrance, Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is commonly called AMLO, vowed to never use the armed forces against the populace and proposed to create a National Guard to ensure the public’s well-being. These policies are among ALMO’s key initiatives to reform Mexico’s security forces, which come at a time when violence in the country remains historically high with an average of 85 homicides per day, according to El País.

The Tlatelolco massacre of students protesting the policies of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz was carried out by the Mexican Army and the Olympic Brigade secret police force. The anniversary serves as a reminder of the deep-rooted corruption and authoritarian tendencies of the Mexican government, trends which AMLO campaigned against to win the presidency. Previous administrations denied government involvements until President Vicente Fox from the National Action Party declassified a variety of documents that confirmed the incident as state-sponsored. Even so, as TeleSur notes, only Luis Echeverría Álvarez, Interior Secretary at the time, was indicted.

AMLO and his National Regeneration Movement Party ran heavily on a platform of rooting out corruption. The creation of the National Guard is one of many policies ALMO has espoused concerning the armed forces, but as LatinNews observes, the idea of uniting the army and federal police into a single department was already proposed by the outgoing Peña Nieto administration and failed to materialize. However, ALMO benefits from his party controlling both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and according to Excelsior, the combined effort of the army and federal police in Acapulco to maintain security also has eased doubts about combining the departments. AMLO has also doubled down on the dissolution of the Center for Investigation and National Security and the Presidential Guard, due to their unpopularity with the public.

The presentation of the new guard as an institution of peace remains questionable, as international and domestic NGOs claim the move would bring Mexico closer towards a military state. Though Obrador, according to Excelsior, announced that the current realities leave the withdrawal of the military from the streets impossible, his proposal that the National Guard could take its place remains criticized. As Max Morales, a Mexican security analyst with Telemundo, says, “[Obrador’s] main issue, for him, is to keep incumbents in place… but it’d be a mistake.”