By Zósimo Camacho, originally published in Spanish in Contralínea
The military operation currently underway is the largest in the history of the country. While for the new government [of López Obrador] this operation is absolutely necessary, it is also of vital importance for the oligarchy as a whole and the entire electoral spectrum of the so-called “political class.” This new Armed Force was established with the “historic” unanimous approval of all parties in the Federal Legislature, followed immediately by legislative approval in all 32 states of the Republic.
This Thursday, federal legislators (senators and representatives) finalized and once again unanimously approved the regulatory laws for the new National Guard. In other words, there is total consensus among those in power and the opposition on the subject of military deployment throughout the entire national territory. There is also consensus on this issue among the actual powers that be—the business interests, media consortiums, and financial groups, among others; even the ecclesiastic hierarchy celebrated the installation of the new body and wished it success in its fight against crime and efforts to establish peace—all for the good of the nation of course.
As we have reported here before, López Obrador’s government faces a confrontation, but not with its adversaries in the PAN, PRI, or PRD parties, nor with the business or financial class, nor with the judges and magistrates of the Judicial Branch. Those adversaries exist, of course, but on important matters they find common ground and forge agreements, such as with the militarization of the Republic.
It is certainly worth acknowledging that combatting corruption is no small task: this fight will generate important frictions among various interests whose abuse of public resources has reached obscene levels. One example: as Contralínea revealed in our column Oficio de Papel, Televisa [a major Mexican television station and media conglomerate] officially received 9 billion pesos in governmental advertising during the last presidential administration. Added to that would be the costs of other “services” offered to the Enrique Peña Nieto administration and, to top it off, as documented by [the newspaper] Reforma, the millions in tax returns granted the station and its associates such as Sky satellite television and the professional soccer team Águilas del América.
Combatting corruption is important of course but this alone will not change the relationship between those who exploit and those who are exploited. The structure that generates economic and social inequality will remain intact.
Twelve articles of the Constitution of the United States of Mexico had to be reformed in order to form the National Guard. It is also worth mentioning that this legislation promotes the arming of civilians for their own security. Article 10 of the Mexican Magana Carta now reads: “The inhabitants of the United States of Mexico have the right to possess firearms in their homes, for their security and legitimate defense […]”.
Both the revised Constitution and the accompanying regulatory laws insist that the National Guard is of civil and police nature. But the articles of transition establish that the National Guard’s troops will be drawn principally from the Military and Naval Police, and secondarily from the Federal Police. In other words, yesterday they were soldiers and today, having been assigned to the National Guard, they are civilians, as if a change in uniform were sufficient to transform a soldier into a police officer. In addition, the fifth transitory article authorizes the President of the Republic to order the Mexican Army, the Mexican Navy, and the Mexican Air Force to carry out tasks of public security.
This operation began with 50,000 soldiers and is slated to increase to 110,000. Notably, as stated by Alfonso Durazo Montaño, Secretary of Civilian Security and Protection, and in contrast to other operations, for the work of the National Guard the troops will not return to their barracks after particular missions; rather, they will stay in the streets, in order to “recover” the national territory.
The commander of the National Guard is the Brigadier General Luis Rodríguez Bucio, expert in state intelligence and combatting narco-trafficking. The remainder of the chiefs of staff of for the new armed force is composed of one representative from the Army (Brigadier General Xicoténcatl de Azolohua Núñez Márquez), one representative from the Navy (Marine Infantry Rear Admiral Gabriel García Chávez) and one from the Federal Police (Police Commissioner Patricia Rosalinda Trujillo Mariel).
Journalist José Réyez revealed in Contralínea that within three years the National Guard is slated to be active in 266 areas of operation across the country, divided as such for the purposes of the new body. Of those areas, 216 are under military command through the Secretary of Defense (Sedena) and 34 under the Secretary of the Navy (Semar). Only 16 correspond to the Federal Police.
Among the 266 areas of operation to be occupied by the National Guard are the communities of the Autonomous Zapatista Municipalities. This new force, at least as far as the map tells us, is planning to install itself at the very heart of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation and the Zapatista movement as a whole.
The information available includes which National Guard areas of operations will be active in that zone and under whose command. “Chiapas Regiment 1” includes four regional areas of operation with headquarters in San Cristóbal de las Casas, where the military liaison officer is Infantry Colonel Vicente Dimayuga Canales; in Comitán de Domínguez the officer is Cavalry Colonel Carlos Alberto Rojas Martínez; in Huehuetán, Brigadier General Jaime Contreras Chávez; and in Las Margaritas, Infantry Colonel Arturo Carrizales Huerta.
“Chiapas Regiment 2” also has four areas of operation for which the military liaison officers are Infantry Colonel Avigail Vargas Tirado, Infantry Lieutenant Colonel Edilberto Jasso Godoy, Infantry Colonel Rodolfo Díaz Navarro, and Artillery Colonel Isaac Guzmán Rojas. The headquarters for this entity will be in Ocosingo, Palenque, Pichucalco, and Bochil, respectively.
The military encirclement of the Zapatistas is tightening.
There is also a “Chiapas Regiment 3” in the south of the state where there are no autonomous Zapatista communities.
In the region where there is Zapatista influence, there are more National Guard headquarters than other regions with high rates of violence, despite the fact that in the exact same document, rates of crime in the Zapatista autonomous territories are listed as among the lowest in the country.
López Obrador has insisted that as president, he is of neither the left nor the right but rather “liberal.” HIs fight is against “conservatives”, as in the 19th century context when those two major factions disputed the national territory. The liberal victory led to a strong government which took charge of “recovering” every region of the country for the liberal State.
López Obrador’s visión is likely that of “recovering” all the territories of the country, not just those under the control of organized crime but also those where organized communities resist the system, making them foreign to the Mexican bourgeois state. It looks like war in Chiapas isn’t over after all.
Zósimo Camacho