Mexico’s Senate approves country’s militarization

On Wednesday, October 5, Mexico’s Senate gave the “green light” to the constitutional reform that confirms the presence of the Armed Forces on the streets in public security tasks until 2028 and boosts militarization in the country.

The measure, approved with 87 votes in favor, including nine from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and two from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will be carried out with an extension of the fifth transitory article of Mexico’s Constitution that will allow the Armed Forces to perform security tasks on Mexican streets.

The initiative, which has been opposed by the National Action Party (PAN), the Citizen Movement, and the plural group, includes economic resources for state and municipal police starting in 2023 and a bicameral commission to monitor the activities of the Armed Forces.

“I take this opportunity to thank the senators because the term is extended for the Army and the Navy Secretariat to support the consolidation of the National Guard and that they can help in public security tasks”, said the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

In this sense, he has explained that the objective is to “protect citizens”. “It is not yet in the Constitution because it returns to the Chamber of Deputies, although where there was more resistance and fewer votes was in the Senate”, he pointed out, as the newspaper ‘La Razón’ reported.

López Obrador proposed in August that Mexican soldiers and Marines remain on the streets beyond 2024 to support the Mexican Police in public security tasks after he had passed a reform in 2019 that had a maximum term of five years.

With information from Gaceta