In the last 12 years, at least 227 civilian functions have come under the control of the Armed Forces.
This is equivalent to 74 billion pesos, transfers of resources that have been made to the detriment of secretariats such as Communications and Transport, Agriculture and Rural Development and Environment and Natural Resources.
This is what the report The Business of Militarization in Mexico refers to. Opacity, power and money, prepared by the organization México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (MUCD), which specifies that of the total number of civil functions, 44% were transferred so far in the six-year term of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
📢 Militarization has become a business, which has paid economically and politically back to #FFAA at unprecedented levels! !️
Today we present our report #ElNegocioDeLaMilitarización💰🪖.
We open thread⬇️ pic.twitter.com/V7lHAzS8MO
— United Mexico (@MUCD) September 29, 2022
“Which means that every peso that goes to the Armed Forces is money that no longer goes to other priority areas,” said Frida Ibarra, director of MUCD’s advocacy area when announcing the main findings of the research.
Ibarra said that of the total number of civil functions transferred in the current six-year term, 65% do not even have to do with public security, but with health, public works, education and social policy.
“We realized that we are facing a new phenomenon that is different and worrying and that also materializes through the allocation and deformation of the public budget to empower the armed forces.”
Another of the findings presented in the report is that from 2006 to 2021 the resources transferred to the Ministry of National Defense increased 163%; and those of the Secretariat of the Navy by 119%.
This is not counting the overexercise of public resources for 64 thousand 223 million pesos that both dependencies reported from 2020 to 2021.
Lisa Sánchez, general director of the organization explains that there is more budget, more overexercise and more possibility of self-managed and self-generated businesses by both dependencies.
This translates into more possibilities for these businesses to be managed from companies of the Armed Forces and relocate those resources where they consider necessary.
“We are putting at stake the quality and type of civilian government we can have and the democratic regime we can look forward to,” he said.
For specialists, each peso allocated to military bodies has been one less weight for civilian institutions, which weakens them and generates an imbalance in the civil-military relations of the institutions of the Mexican State.
Record budget alert for Sedena
Another of the points raised during the presentation of the report was the recent integration of the National Guard into the Sedena.
This action gave the Ministry of Defense a budget greater than 158 billion pesos.
“These are absolutely incomprehensible numbers for anyone, because no one has seen that amount of money, but when we try to start splitting it we understand what we are talking about, because 158 billion pesos is equivalent to 435 million pesos every day, which is equal to 18 million pesos every hour, which is equal to 302 thousand pesos every minute, five thousand pesos every second,” said Leonardo Núñez, director of the Applied Research Unit of the organization Mexicanos Unidos Contra la Delincuencia.
The report states that the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection went from allocating 32% of its resources to the National Guard in 2020 to giving it 67% of its resources in 2022, which also makes it one of the dependencies most affected by the transfer of civilian functions to the Army.
“What is happening is part of an absolutely undemocratic public spending process, which beyond the concerns of the order of security functions, which is another discussion, here is another flag of a large risk space where citizens are losing the ability to know what we are losing, the ability to control it and the ability to even ask what they are doing with our money.” Nunez said.
To this position was added Darla Aguilar, general director of Global Thought MX, who described as an ‘incredible’ fact the budget that the Army will now have.
“Especially in a discussion where there are many groups that are fighting for a budget for dignified care for victims, when they are looking for the national care system to have a budget, to be implemented, and we are here spending billions of pesos on an issue and in an area that is not really giving us security.”
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