Sheinbaum will be Mexico’s next president, but the military holds the reins

Rosa Icela Guzmán at the polling place where she is to cast her vote. Instead of spoiling her ballot, she wrote in the name of her son Luis Ángel López Guzmán, who is disappeared. By dignifying her vote with his memory, she hopes to help make her son and the thousands of disappeared in Mexico more visible. Photo © María Ruíz.

Opinion • Dawn Marie Paley and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar • June 7, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Claudia Sheinbaum's victory on June 2 marked a historic turning point, as Mexicans elected the country’s first female president. But it is imperative to go beyond the symbolism in the country’s top office to examine the balance of forces that condition presidential power today.  

There has been talk of a transformation of society and an end to neoliberalism and to the war on drugs since the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) began in December 2018. This was his much vaunted “Fourth Transformation.” However, the government did not make the deep changes in the political system that it promised. 

The most progressive achievement of AMLO’s government is arguably the increase in the minimum wage. But the broader economic model that it embraced leaves much to be desired. The extractive industries remain intact. Almost half of federal spending goes to Pemex, the state oil company. The wealthiest continue not to pay the taxes they should. Foreign investment in maquilas and the promotion of mass tourism—both built on the exploitation of the working class and environmental dispossession and devastation—are put forward as the great hopes for the country’s future. Today, in the midst of the hottest spring in history, 85 percent of the country's municipalities are suffering from drought, while private companies are hoarding water in aquifers. This is how the most violent six-year presidential term in recent decades is coming to a close. 

For the first time, families of some of the more than 114,000 people disappeared—most of them since 2007—called on Mexicans to write-in the name of a disappeared person on their ballots. They made this call after AMLO had disillusioned them with his broken promises. In this election, approximately 1.3 million ballots were annulled, 100,000 more than in 2018. 

As president, Sheinbaum will inherit a series of longstanding problems: the hyper-exploitation of workers, the lack of access to quality education and public healthcare, water scarcity, misogynist violence, paramilitary control on behalf of organized crime and extractive corporations in large parts of the country and an increasingly aggressive neighbor to the north.  

But the new commander of the Armed Forces will face an additional problem: Mexico’s immensely powerful generals. 

Growing militarization

Under López Obrador, militarization has expanded beyond anything in living memory.

During his term, the government increased the budgets of the Secretariat of National Defense and the Secretariat of the Navy by 150 percent. It used much of that public money to subsidize the unprecedented entry of the Armed Forces into the business of moving goods and passengers, tourism, and port and customs operations. This is one of the most significant changes that occurred during his six-year term, which ends on September 30.

"Between 2007 and August 2023, lawmakers presented 87 constitutional and legislative reforms designed to transfer civilian functions or budgets to the armed forces in Congress," according to the National Militarization Inventory. "Of these, 77 percent were presented between September 1, 2018 and August 31, 2023." These figures indicate that the militarization of civilian life is not new, but that it greatly expanded during AMLO's time in office. 

Morena, AMLO’s party, has an opportunistic attitude toward party alliances. This has assured it a supermajority in Congress and left it a handful of votes short of a supermajority in the Senate. A supermajority, made up of two-thirds of lawmakers, is enough to pass constitutional changes. If lawmakers use this majority to enshrine the militarization of public security into the Constitution, the outcome will be devastating.

Candidates said little about militarization during the presidential campaign. In a press conference shortly after the launch of her campaign, Sheinbaum denied the militarization of the country and minimized the army’s role in the National Guard. The National Guard was touted as a civilian-run force that would replace the Federal Police, but from its foundation in 2019 it has been under army control and led by a retired general. Today most of its 107,000 members are soldiers. 

When Sheinbaum takes office in October, the Armed Forces will align itself with the executive branch, as it has done for almost 80 years. However, maintaining their loyalty will become much more costly thanks to the immense political and economic influence that the army and the marines gained under the leadership of López Obrador and his Morena party.

Luis Ángel López Guzmán was disappeared in 2018 in the Tláhuac Forest in Mexico City. His mother wants politicians to stop exploiting her pain and to prioritize searching families and their disappeared when the campaign is over. Photo © María Ruíz.

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.