In his six years as Mexico\u2019s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave his country\u2019s military two important jobs: build infrastructure works to supercharge the economy and rein in violent crime.<\/p>\n
By the end of his presidency, he will have accomplished only one \u2014 and left the other worse than ever.<\/p>\n
AMLO, as the president is known, has used Mexico\u2019s armed forces to build airports, construct a nearly 1,000-mile long railroad through the Mayan jungle, and create a state-owned airline. Those initiatives are likely to burnish his economic legacy as he prepares to leave office following this June\u2019s presidential election. <\/p>\n
Yet Lopez Obrador will leave another legacy as well. His administration has presided over the bloodiest term in the nation\u2019s recent history, with more than 170,000 homicides since he took office in 2018 through February. That is a 26% increase from the 135,345 murders during the term of his predecessor, Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto. And it has happened despite the combined budgets of the armed forces \u2014 the Ministries of Defense, Navy and the National Guard \u2014 being boosted by 150%. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis government had the largest legal tools, institutional backup and budget than any other administration, and all the numbers are the worst,\u201d said independent Senator Emilio Alvarez Icaza. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing the worst numbers in homicides, in disappeared, in femicide. So the question is, what did they do?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly all of the extra funds AMLO\u2019s administration provided to the military were directed to refashioning the armed forces into a construction behemoth, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News and Presupuesta Policy Consulting SA. This is the most in-depth assessment of the military\u2019s resources and spending priorities to date. Meanwhile, as heists, kidnappings and extortions proliferated, the budget to train and deploy soldiers remained practically unchanged in real terms.<\/p>\n
A separate public security ministry \u2014 which finances certain civilian-run public security efforts including the federal prison system \u2014 spent nearly 55% less during Lopez Obrador\u2019s administration than Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s, and roughly 12% less than during Calderon\u2019s term. The ministry receives funding for the National Guard, which Bloomberg did not include in this calculation since it is operated by the military. <\/p>\n
While the president is flanked by top brass from Mexico\u2019s Defense Ministry and Navy at various ribbon cuttings, cartels have been left to effectively run pockets of Mexican society. They charge locals for everything from Wi-Fi connections to water usage and even the right to have a party. Since the start of this year\u2019s presidential election season on March 1, nearly 400 people connected to politics have been threatened or kidnapped, according to Mexico City-based consultancy Integralia. At least 24 have been murdered. <\/p>\n
All of that has made public safety a top issue for voters. One recent poll said 46% feel security has gotten worse during AMLO\u2019s term, and 74% think the government is very corrupt. It\u2019s also ratcheted up tensions with the US, where migration across its southern border with Mexico and the influx of fentanyl-laced drugs are top issues in the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
That leaves Mexico\u2019s next president \u2014 be it AMLO\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and overwhelming favorite Claudia Sheinbaum or opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez \u2014 with limited options for reining in the military\u2019s spending and reach, at least in the short term. In 2022, AMLO changed the constitution to allow the military to handle public security until at least 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made it really hard for the next administration to walk everything back unless they have a wide majority in congress,\u201d said Lisa Sanchez, head of Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia, a think tank that published a report called The Business of Militarization. \u201cTheir economic and political empowerment carries other risks \u2014 they\u2019re a much more powerful force than they used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The President\u2019s office and the Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on this article. \u201cThere\u2019s talk that the army and the navy are involved in everything,\u201d Lopez Obrador said during one of his regular morning press conferences in January. \u201cIt\u2019s not about militarizing the country. It\u2019s about relying on two institutions that are pillars of the Mexican nation and that have helped us deliver in our responsibility to govern.\u201d <\/p>\n
In an interview, Arturo Zaldivar, the former head of the Supreme Court who is now helping Sheinbaum design her security strategy, said that \u201cthe armed forces have always been loyal in Mexico,\u201d but as far as infrastructure-building goes, \u201cwe\u2019d maybe have to re-calculate the role these institutions have. It was important for them to intervene, and we\u2019ll have to see if there\u2019s reason for them to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever wins, Xochitl or Claudia, is going to face a lot of problems in ruling this country,\u201d said Maria Elena Morera, activist and head of Causa en Comun AC, a nonprofit that studies security and other issues. \u201cWith the military, they have so much power now \u2014 maybe they can reach an agreement that\u2019s good for them. But it\u2019s going to be hard to take away all those businesses, and they were the ones who really insisted in handling the country\u2019s security.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program had a very official-sounding name: \u201cNational Security Government Infrastructure Projects.\u201d But rather than funding infrastructure works that serve the public like a train line or new airport, the investment program funds upgrades and expansions of the military’s footprint. <\/p>\n
During AMLO\u2019s administration, the Defense Ministry used the funding to build new air and military bases and remodeled and expanded military hospitals, according to Bloomberg\u2019s analysis of military spending. It also modified a ranch to include an equine reproduction center, added a cargo elevator for a gym at its headquarters in Lomas de Sotelo in Mexico City and built a diving center in Cozumel, among other projects.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s also notable is that the military ultimately spent 288% more for the program than the 35.4 billion pesos, or about $2.1 billion, that Congress originally approved from 2019 to 2022. That meant the military infrastructure program accounted for 22% of the Defense Ministry\u2019s annual budget, a leap from the 1% to 3% that was typically allocated during the Calderon and Pe\u00f1a Nieto years. <\/p>\n
The Navy\u2019s National Security Government Infrastructure Projects program, meanwhile, now only accounts for 1.5% of its ministry\u2019s overall budget. That\u2019s less than the 2.5% during the Calderon years and the 4.3% during the Pe\u00f1a Nieto era.<\/p>\n
The Defense ministry was able to spend more than was allotted for such projects through what\u2019s known as an amendment \u2014 a tool that lets a ministry change the budget without Congress\u2019s approval, as is the case in many other countries. Congress is only informed about amendments in rare circumstances where the changes exceed 5% of a given governmental branch\u2019s budget, according to Aura Martinez, an information coordinator at the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency.<\/p>\n
Defense has been an avid user of amendments, spending 27% more than Congress approved from 2019 to 2022, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d never seen so many spending mechanisms made available to the armed forces as we\u2019re seeing now,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cDefense\u2019s overspending equals all of the Labor Ministry\u2019s annual budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he\u2019s spending more on the military, Lopez Obrador\u2019s priorities have differed from those of his predecessors. Historically, Mexican presidents have devoted nearly 50% of the Defense administration\u2019s budget to training, recruiting and deploying soldiers, and buying weapons. Under Lopez Obrador\u2019s administration, that share of the budget, in real terms, will have fallen to 17%. <\/p>\n
Instead, 51% of the Defense and Navy\u2019s combined budgets of 331 billion pesos in 2024 was earmarked for infrastructure projects. <\/p>\n
Nearly half of the 259 billion pesos that Defense got this year will be used to finish the third of the Maya Train line it\u2019s in charge of building. The railway is designed to ferry passengers between tourism hotspots like Cancun and Merida, and to hotels the military is building and operating deep in the Mayan jungle.<\/p>\n
Another chunk will go to operating the new state-owned airline as well as managing airports near Mexico City and Tulum. <\/p>\n
Much of the military\u2019s business operations are housed under a government-run company called Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos, Olmeca-Maya-Mexica SA \u2014 better known as Gafsacomm. AMLO created the conglomerate in 2022 to oversee most government-built infrastructure projects and handed over its operation to the Defense Ministry. Its budget this year of 15 billion pesos will help it operate 12 airports, five hotels, three natural parks, two trains, a museum and the Mexicana airline.<\/p>\n
Hardly anyone expects the airports or the airline to turn a profit in the near future. While the group\u2019s losses will be covered by public coffers, it will get to keep any profit it does make and redirect it to the military\u2019s pension system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trend is that increasingly, the armed forces are going to have different money-making streams,\u201d said Sanchez. \u201cAnd that\u2019s dangerous because you\u2019re giving more money to an armed corporation that has a legitimate use of power and 400,000 soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lopez Obrador sees the projects as a way to develop the economy of traditionally poor parts of the country, which will create more employment and lead to better conditions, ultimately improving public safety. And the military has to be in charge of it all because, in the president\u2019s view, it\u2019s able to rise above the corruption that plagues civilian agencies handling funds for major projects. The military can deliver at a fraction of the cost of a private company and in a much shorter time, he says.<\/p>\n
There are several other, less transparent ways that Mexico\u2019s armed forces receive funds to oversee infrastructure works. <\/p>\n
The Defense and Navy control trusts in which they or other entities can deposit money without being required to disclose where the funds came from or how they\u2019re being used. At the end of 2023, trusts administrated by the military held 81 billion pesos, compared with 7 billion pesos at the end of Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s government in 2018, according to nonprofit Mexico Evalua. <\/p>\n
Given the lack of disclosure, there\u2019s no way to know how much of the money in the trusts is accounted for in the budget. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe exorbitant sum of it all and the risk of double counting are exactly why they should tell us what\u2019s in there,\u201d said Sanchez.<\/p>\n
Then there are contracts. Between 2019 and 2022, the Defense Ministry received an additional 191 billion pesos through agreements with other federal ministries for public projects including the Maya Train, according to the nonprofit Mexican Institute of Competitiveness, known as IMCO. <\/p>\n
Contracts are rarely made public and increasingly difficult to track, given Lopez Obrador\u2019s near dismantling of transparency watchdog, the National Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection. IMCO obtained the information through government information requests and legal challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re facing an opacity monster,\u201d said Paula Villase\u00f1or, the former head of IMCO\u2019s Effective Government division. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly hard to know how much money and contracts they have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sara Velazquez, the lead author of a report called \u201cNational Inventory of the Militarized,\u201d said the military receives money from so many sources that it\u2019s nearly impossible to trace all of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think even they don\u2019t know how much money they get every year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s official crime statistics are known to be far from exact. The country\u2019s \u201ccifra negra,\u201d or the estimated share of crimes that go unreported, reached 92% in 2022, according to statistics agency Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia. Homicides, though slightly down from the first few years of Lopez Obrador\u2019s administration, are on track to end up the highest ever in a presidential term. The Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica (SESNSP), which is separate from Inegi, has counted 170,959 homicides with intent since AMLO took office through February of this year.<\/p>\n
The president has acknowledged that homicides have surpassed those in previous administrations, but he casts blame on the violent country he inherited. Homicides fell 7% between 2021 and 2022, and dropped 4% between 2022 and 2023, which Lopez Obrador said was a direct reflection of his security strategy. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy to think that what we used to consider a violent year was one with 20,000 victims of homicide with intent,\u201d said Lilian Chapa, a public-policy analyst who served as an adviser to SESNSP. The registry counted 29,705 homicides with intent in 2023. <\/p>\n
Last year, security consultant Manuel Garza witnessed the biggest heist he had seen in two decades. A shipment of mainly electronic goods worth nearly 17 million pesos was traveling along the highway from the port of Veracruz through the central state of Puebla. The person monitoring it on a screen suddenly saw the dot freeze. <\/p>\n
An alert was raised when the dot hadn\u2019t moved in over 40 minutes, said Garza, who is being identified using a pseudonym to protect him from retaliation. When the company\u2019s private car came to check the scene, the truck\u2019s security team of two armed guards were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
The National Guard showed up 30 minutes later. When the truck\u2019s driver called from the neighboring state of Hidalgo, he said he and the two guards had been tied up. But the National Guard didn\u2019t take down the witnesses\u2019 statements. For that, the security company had to go to the local prosecutor\u2019s office. They got back nothing else from the heist.<\/p>\n
The episode is emblematic of how the military has frequently taken a halfhearted approach to law-enforcement responsibilities it inherited when the Mexican government did away with the Federal Police in 2019.<\/p>\n
The National Guard had a total headcount of about 104,000 at the end of 2022. That includes 17,419 members drawn from the disbanded Federal Police and 1,050 new recruits. However, the majority of the force is made up of soldiers and marines on loan from the Defense and Navy. The troops were given new uniforms and armbands, but little to no training on how to do police work.<\/p>\n
That has led to plummeting arrests as many National Guard members prefer to turn a blind eye to whatever crime is happening before them than go through the motions of properly arresting a suspect and filing the report correctly, according to Chapa, the public-policy analyst. Seizures of illegal drugs and weapons have plummeted as a result. <\/p>\n
Guillermo Montes, who also asked to use a pseudonym, was one of the marines transferred to the National Guard. He saw many of his fellow guardsmen make mistakes when they intervened at the scene of a crime because they had no idea how to track down robbers or respond to 911 calls. <\/p>\n
One of the hardest things to do, he recalled, was present evidence in front of a judge. Often, their cases were dismissed on procedural grounds, since they hadn\u2019t been fully trained on the protocols of filling out police reports. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe armed forces are not trained to be police,\u201d he said. \u201cWe followed in order to help, but we were lacking many of the things that the police know.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lopez Obrador didn\u2019t always back such broad use of the armed forces. He had been vocal about sending the military \u201cback to its barracks\u201d since losing the 2006 presidential election against Calderon, who had the armed forces take to the streets to fight cartels. That resulted in more than 103,000 homicides during his administration. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t solve the country\u2019s insecurity and violence with the army,\u201d Lopez Obrador said in a video dated 2010. \u201cWe can\u2019t use the military to make up for the civilian government\u2019s shortcomings. It\u2019s important we don\u2019t give the army excessive faculties \u2014 we can\u2019t accept a militarist government.\u201d <\/p>\n
But it didn\u2019t take long for him to change his mind. In regular meetings during his transition into office, the Defense Ministry\u2019s top brass laid out how corrupt the Federal Police was and how the military was the only institution worthy of his trust, according to a person familiar with the situation. <\/p>\n
The Federal Police were plagued by reports of abuse of power, torture and corruption. Last year, Genaro Garcia Luna, who had been in charge of Mexico\u2019s battle to root out illegal narcotics and vanquish drug kingpins, was convicted by a federal jury in New York of helping Sinaloa cartel members import and distribute drugs in the US. His defense has requested a new trial. <\/p>\n
Though AMLO initially presented the National Guard as a civilian force, it\u2019s effectively operated by the Defense Ministry, and its budget is routinely transferred to the military. In August 2022, Lopez Obrador issued a decree to place the guard under the Defense Ministry.<\/p>\n
In April 2023, Mexico\u2019s top court said that decree was unconstitutional, and gave the government until Jan. 1, 2024 to return the operation of the guard to the civilian ministry. <\/p>\n
AMLO has said he would abide by the court\u2019s order, but in February, he sent a new proposal to Congress to officially move the National Guard to Defense. Congress has yet to pass it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re living in two worlds,\u201d said Ernesto Lopez Portillo, former member of Mexico City\u2019s Human Rights Commission and head of Universidad Iberoamericana\u2019s Citizen Security program. \u201cThe world of the constitution that says public security is a civilian matter\u201d and \u201cthe world of reality, where the National Guard is, under every indicator that we have, strictly military.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheinbaum has said she intends to consolidate the National Guard, and following AMLO\u2019s footsteps, that it should operate under the Defense Ministry.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Galvez has said the military has been asked to do too many things unrelated to their core mission. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t be building trains, patrolling parks or handing out books,\u201d she said at an event in Campeche in March. \u201cA large part of the country is in the hands of criminals these days, we need the military to return to its national security activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s militarization isn\u2019t exclusive to the federal government, according Causa en Comun’s Morera. Military and Navy officials now oversee public-security ministries in 17 of the country\u2019s 32 states. Sixteen of those states are ruled by AMLO\u2019s Morena party. <\/p>\n
For whoever wins Mexico\u2019s presidential election on June 2, the key question will be how to deal with an empowered, enlarged and wealthy military that has taken over hundreds of tasks that used to be in the hands of civilians \u2014 and that has more revenue streams than ever \u2014 while reining in the record-breaking number of homicides. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve overused a perverse blanket called national security,\u201d said Senator Alvarez Icaza. \u201cNow the dilemma is, how do we take away all the money and power that Lopez Obrador gave them?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014With assistance from Maya Averbuch, Rafael Gayol and Michael O’Boyle.<\/p>\n
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