One of the arguments that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador uses to justify that the National Guard loses its civil character and joins the Armed Forces, is that human rights violations are no longer being committed. However, these uniformed men are the ones who have the greatest complaints for violating the individual guarantees of citizens.
“The National Guard is being trained in respect for human rights, so there will be no risk of excesses of authoritarianism. Torture is banished, that is, torture and massacres will never be allowed; life is always going to be respected, “said the federal president in Veracruz yesterday.
However, if it is counted since 2020, when the work of the National Guard in monitoring the protection of human rights was recorded for the first time, this corporation and the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) have consolidated their appearance among the 10 security corporations with the highest complaints.
For example, in that year, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) registered 350 complaints against the National Guard, and 359, for the Sedena for various actions against individual guarantees that range from arbitrary detentions, to torture and disappearance. forced.
In the count of complaints related to torture, the National Guard was identified in five cases in San Luis Potosí, State of Mexico, Morelos and Oaxaca. The Sedena was accused of this same crime on six occasions in: San Luis Potosí, Puebla and Sinaloa.
The Secretariat of the Navy, the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, the Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Ministerial Police accumulated 31 complaints of torture in 2020.
Read: Constitutional militarization of the National Guard: AMLO’s dangerous bet
In the case of forced disappearance, all the corporations in charge of guaranteeing and seeking justice were accused on 15 occasions before the CNDH that year.
Although the data show that the incidence of this crime is relatively lower compared to other years, the high degree of black numbers that exist in these cases must be taken into account.
“The great problem of torture more than with forced disappearance and with regard to intentional homicide is the black figure, the case of torture is where there is a greater number of black figures,” acknowledged Daniel Vázquez, academic at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences ( Flacso) in an interview with Forbes Mexico.
“The bulk of torture is practically carried out by police officers who would have to receive the complaint and investigate and it is a disincentive for this case to be reported,” he added.
For this year, the panorama is not far from being different for the National Guard and the Armed Forces. According to the National Human Rights Violation Alert System, from January to June 2021, the National Guard has already accumulated 241 complaints for various offenses.
In the case of torture, the CNDH counted 26 cases of torture and nine cases of forced disappearance as of June. In the first crime, the National Guard adds eight cases; meanwhile, the Sedena is indicated in three.
However, the FGR, the SSPC, the Navy and the Federal Ministerial Police add up to 12 complaints nationwide.
Baja California, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, Guerrero, the State of Mexico and Mexico City have the most complaints regarding torture related to national security agencies.
“They are committed in practically the entire national territory (cases of torture and forced disappearance) are not committed in a single region, but that throughout the country we have tortured people, we have disappeared people and it is that they are committed by practically all the security bodies – it does not matter if it is municipal, state or federal – and they are committed with total impunity, ”said Vázquez.
The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) adds to the first semester of the year, 222 complaints for violations of individual guarantees; in last place is the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) with 178 complaints nationwide.
According to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), it is in Chihuahua where the National Guard presents the highest number of complaints, with 26, most of them related to arbitrary detentions, improper exercise of public duty and violation of the rights of migrants.
It may interest you: National Guard to Sedena due to lack of command, Durazo justifies
According to the agency, at the national level the National Guard has 53 open registries for arbitrary detentions, where 13 have been registered in Chihuahua.
Two municipalities of this entity: Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua are among the 50 most violent municipalities in Mexico with 673 intentional homicides together from January to May.
Despite this, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has argued that the penetration of crime in local police forces makes the participation of the Army and Navy in tasks related to public safety more and more necessary.
For this reason, it will allocate another 50 billion pesos to the National Guard to accelerate the recruitment of members as well as the construction of barracks and guarantee its presence at the federal level.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (Inegi), in the national survey of Urban Public Security, 75% of the population over 18 years of age consider the performance of the National Guard effective.
Similarly, the SIMO consultancy carried out a survey this year for the newspaper El País in which 62% of the citizenry supported the Armed Forces; the National Guard takes 53%.
Although the work of the Armed Forces is questioned at the national and international level due to its negative characteristics in the worsening of violence, experts such as Ernesto López Portillo, coordinator of the Citizen Security Program of the Ibero-American University, consider that the image of the National Guard It is associated with the discourse on the need for the military to solve the problem of violence in Mexico.
“What we can say is that the National Guard is approved by the majority, when public safety is equally disapproved by the majority.
“The National Guard would be approved, according to this hypothesis, not because of what it does but because of the image that it represents for the great majority, that is, the supposed military solution that the police could not give,” says López Portillo in his Critical Route column. published in Political Animal on July 5.
So far, the National Guard has 99 thousand 446 elements and facing the second stage of López Obrador’s six-year term, it will be discussed in the Congress of the Union if their work is integrated into the National Defense and with it, being of a character civil, its corruptibility is avoided.
Follow us on Google News to keep you always informed