Who can say no to the generals?
As we recover from the post-election hangover, one question haunts us: who can say no to the Armed Forces?
Let's take a concrete example, bearing in mind that we are talking about a country in which public hospitals lack medicine and basic supplies.
In April, the Ministry of Defense (SEDENA) used a company it controls to request $21 billion pesos (US$1.18 billion) for the purchase of airplanes for Mexicana de Aviacion, the formerly bankrupt airline that it was charged with rebuilding in 2023. This is a huge sum of money. By way of example, it’s nearly double what the Mexican Institute of Social Security spent on daycares in 2021. The day after the elections, Mexicana announced the purchase of 20 new airplanes from Brazil.
In the current six-year term, it became clear that the army gets what it asks for, but that the same does not apply the other way around. When civilians make requests from the army, they come away empty handed, even when the civilian in question is their commander in chief.
For decades, the armed forces have violently repressed popular, Indigenous, student and workers’ movements on behalf of the party in power while enjoying total impunity for their actions. Even after the democratization that occurred in 2000, it was impossible to get any justice for the thousands of victims of state violence that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. These are facts that any leftist in Mexico understands in their bones.
But then again, who cares? What matters here is the consolidation of a political project at any cost. Who better to guarantee the Fourth Transformation than "the people in uniform," with their vertical organization, their training in waging war against the people, and their presence in nearly every neighborhood in Mexico?
We know that over the last six years López Obrador asked the army to give the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, which was investigating the disappearance of the 43 teaching students from Ayotzinapa, files relevant to the case. The army refused, of course. The president later stated publicly that the military didn’t participate in the disappearance of the 43 students, even though eight soldiers are charged with disappearance based on their involvement in the events in question.
On June 3, as soon as his successor was elected, AMLO met with the families of the 43, along with the secretaries of defense, navy and various civilians. They handed the families 15 of the 800 missing documents pertaining to what took place the night of the attacks in Iguala, Guerrero. Reporter Pablo Ferri notes that AMLO acknowledged the existence of the other documents, which he had previously denied, but went on to say that they are under reserve.
Days before Sheinbaum’s inauguration, the country will mark the tenth anniversary of the brutal disappearance of the young college students. Ten years and two presidents have allowed the crime to go unsolved, because neither the military’s special legal jurisdiction nor its impunity could be overcome.
When she takes office on October 1st, it is likely that we will again be told to be patient, to stay hopeful, to hold our breath and let the president do her work. We’ll be told that change is right around the corner. The problem is that Sheinbaum's six-year term will begin with an original sin that will be difficult to correct: it will begin tightly bound to the armed forces, which are the most violent, conservative and anti-democratic organizations in México.
