The Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) already has control of the National Guard throughout the country. Its land and facilities, the direction of its 32 state coordinations, and the recruitment and movement of new elements within this corporation – a civil police according to the Constitution – fall exclusively on this military institution.
Although the reform announced by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to send the National Guard (GN) to Sedena is not yet discussed or approved, official documents obtained by Political Animal confirm the military dominance that, in fact, already exists over this police corporation.
The information also shows that the GN already reaches a state of strength greater than 102,000 elements, which makes it the largest public security corporation in the entire country surpassing the Mexico City police. More than 75 percent of its elements are active military of the armed forces.
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The only civilian appendix is made up of the 21,000 former members of the Federal Police that were transferred to it, and assigned to the supervision of roads, ports and airports. But how Political Animal He said in this note, from this month they will also begin to be relieved by military police in these functions.
According to a seven-step plan designed by Sedena itself, it is expected that it will be in September when the reform initiative that will formalize the transfer of the GN as a new beloved force to Congress will be presented to Congress, with the aim that in 2022 the militarization of the corporation will be consumed.
Military infrastructure… and opaque
In the two years that the National Guard has accumulated since its deployment, the governments of various states and municipalities of the country have ceded land and land to the federal government on loan or definitively to be used in the construction of their barracks. In several of these cases, there have even been public events where the authorities hand over these facilities to REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GN.
What the reports obtained by this means prove, however, is that all this infrastructure was not assigned to the GN or the Secretariat of Security but to the National Defense. This through agreements or contracts that Sedena has tried to hide by classifying them as reserved.
To prove this, copies of the agreements signed for the construction of its barracks on three properties were requested from the transparency area of the National Guard: one donated on January 29, 2020 by the municipal government of Ciudad Juárez. Chihuahua; another ceded by the municipality of Guadalupe, Nuevo León on March 5, 2021; and one more awarded on June 13 in Ixtapaluca, state of Mexico.
In all cases, the GN’s response was that such information was “non-existent” because “The Ministry of National Defense is the agency that is building the National Guard barracks.
The information related to all these agreements was then requested from Sedena but the answer, in all cases, was that it could not be delivered because the Transparency vomit of the military agency itself classified it as reserved for a period of at least five years alluding to security risks.
The document of the classification on these bases of a civil police, was signed by an active militant: the General of Division and president of the Transparency Committee of the Sedena, David Córdova Campos.
Political Animal he then requested the same document, but directly to the local governments that ceded these lands and lands for the construction of the bases. In response, the municipal government of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua did grant a copy of the donation certificate of the land of 34 thousand 700 square meters, valued at 20 million 820 thousand pesos.
This document establishes that the land, which will be used for the construction of National Guard facilities, is disposed of free of charge as a donation in favor of the federal government through the Ministry of National Defense.
The municipality of Guadalupe, Nuevo León, responded to the request that it could not deliver the concession contract because “it was still being prepared.” However, he confirmed that the land of 9 thousand 748 square meters and valued at 10 million 619 thousand pesos, was ceded “for a certain time in favor of sedena for the construction of the detachment that houses the National Guard.”
The municipality of Ixtapaluca, for its part, has not yet been replenishedwas in accordance with the application submitted at the time of this publication.
The 100% military management
Sedena also maintains complete control of the 32 state coordinations of the National Guard, and not only of its operational high command. At the head of each of these coordinations is appointed an active general appointed from the same National Defense.
Originally, it had been proposed that military commanders would occupy these positions while new civilian cadres were developed that could assume this task. The reality is that this has become a permanent condition.
This was confirmed by the National Guard through the letter number GN/UAJT/UT/5760/2021 dated August 25 and delivered in response to a request for information presented by this media. It details the names of the 32 coordinators of the corporation – one for each state – and specifies that all come from the same Sedena.
In some entities there have been up to three changes of responsible coordinators but all of them come from the same Sedena.
According to the National Guard Law, a state coordinator (whose rank within the corporation is that of inspector or commissioner) is the highest authority of this corporation within the federal entity that corresponds to him. At his command are all the elements that are deployed in that locality. This means that it is active Army generals who hold the coordination and control of this force, which is police by definition.
In the hierarchical structure of the Guard, above the state coordinators are only the territorial coordinators. However, to date none of them have been named. This is recognized by the corporation in the same office mentioned above.
In this way, the only superior command of these state coordinators is the commander in chief of the National Guard, who as is already known is also a military man: General Luis Rodríguez Bucio.
Civilians in extinction
The National Guard is not only a force controlled by the Sedena, but it is also constituted mostly by its own elements. On average, 3 out of 4 members of its operational force are members of the armed forces, according to data from that corporation and the National Defense itself.
Until last August the state of force of the corporation – according to official data of the Guard itself – amounts to 102 thousand 944 elements, of which 61 thousand 708 are elements of the National Defense, and 17 thousand 418 belong to the Secretariat of the Navy. Altogether, it is 76.8 percent of all troops.
For its part, Sedena confirmed in response to another request for transparency that 61,708 members of the Military Police who are active are assigned to the National Guard, a figure that coincides with that reported by that corporation.
How Political Animal he had already advanced in previous notes, the previous data prove that at no time have civilians been recruited to develop the National Guard. The new elements that have arrived have been recruited first by the Mexican Army as military police and only after them are they temporarily assigned to the GN. This is a situation contrary to that contemplated in the constitutional reform of 2019.
The only civilians within the GN are the remaining 23,818 elements. These are former agents of the Federal Police who were mainly assigned to security areas on communication routes (roads, ports and airports), as well as to some strategic facilities.
The plan of the National Defense is that, as of this month, the replacement of these civilians by new members of the military police will begin. Guanajuato and Jalisco will be the two entities where this effort will begin. So far it has not been specified what will happen with the former federal police.
Read more: Army and Navy, institutions ‘that are supporting me the most for the transformation of Mexico’, says AMLO
Military Guard in seven steps
According to an internal document dated last May and to which this media had access, the initiative to send the National Guard to the Army is a proposal prepared and planned by the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) itself as part of its two-stage reorganization strategy. The goal is to consummate this merger by 2022.
The first stage of the plan contemplates an internal reorganization of Sedena itself that includes a restructuring of its administrative bodies, as well as the creation of the Mexican Army Command. The latter was already consummated on August 13 in an official ceremony where General Eufemio Ibarra Flores was appointed commander.
The secondThe stage of the strategy contemplates the “incorporation of the National Guard as an Armed Force” within the Sedena, and for this purpose the plan contemplates seven steps, four of them in 2021 and three more in 2022.
The first step is the presentation to the president of the draft constitutional reform initiative that aims to change what had been approved in 2019 when the National Guard was called a civilian security force attached to the Ministry of Security.
President López Obrador publicly announced on June 15 that he would send this initiative to Congress, so this first one has already been fulfilled. The second step is to send the draft initiative to the Chamber of Deputies, a situation that is expected to occur in September.
The third step has been called “lobbying congress” to build the qualified majority (two-thirds of deputies) required to pass a constitutional amendment.
Sedena contemplates that this lobbying will be successful just in the ordinary period of sessions that concludes before December, since the fourth step is precisely the promulgation of the corresponding constitutional reform.
By 2022, the last three steps are contemplated: the publication of secondary legislation; the materialization of the necessary organic and administrative adaptations; and finally the magazine and entry of the National Guard as an armed force attached to the Sedena.
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