The Army Marches Without a Map

You ring the switchboard of the National Ministry of Defense and ask to be put through to the public relations office of the Mexican Army. The man doesn’t know the extension. First he tries what they call the Department of Documentation. No luck there. Then you find yourself talking to a soldier of an active battalion. One more try and you succeed at least in confirming that the army actually has a PR office, called the Department of Social Communication. The trouble is, no one answers.

Like all other Mexican institutions, the armed forces have long been entangled with the system of one-party rule. Now this creaking authoritarian structure is being shaken by the process of democratic transition. It is by definition a time of uncertainty, and the army is not immune.

The dismantling and reform of the operative conventions developed by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) government over the past 75 years has dislocated relations among the country’s political actors. It also has bred complex problems of order--or, rather, disorder. It is here that the military is having to step in, playing a role for which not all of the lines have been written.

Back on the first of January 1994, the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas stunned the world. President Carlos Salinas was dissuaded from pursuing a military solution, and the army’s task became that of “peacekeeping” while a political solution was sought. When civilians complained to the many foreign news reporters about the army’s mistreatment of them, the top brass were made to answer. The traditional insularity long enjoyed by the Mexican military was over.

It may not seem a giant step, but in Mexico it’s an important sign of the times. When the army acknowledges the principle of public accountability, the message is that the Mexican political system is undergoing important changes. This poses a paradox for the military, for decades a low-profile, low-tech force charged with not much more than defending the nation’s borders.

Broadly speaking, there are two models for civilian control over the army. One involves a tacit understanding that the ruling party guarantees the army’s insulation from politics while the army respects the autonomy of the party. This is what spared Mexico the military interventions that characterized so many Latin American countries during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Traces of this model can be found in the records of the July 6 elections. Looking down the list of PRI candidates for Congress, one finds the name of Gen. Miguel Angel Godinez, the former commander in Chiapas. (He will take one of the appointive seats.) The general’s candidacy epitomizes the close relationship of military subordination to the dynamics of PRI rule.

But there is also a good deal of evidence of late to suggest that the mechanisms underpinning civilian supremacy have been subjected to considerable pressure, and that the boundaries around the military have widened. This is where the other model of control comes into play--the military controlled by the rubrics of democracy.

Over the past few years we have been observing trends toward this second model in the Mexican military. These include increased attention to respect for human rights, the recognition of an emerging “parliament supremacy” and--back to that switchboard--the development of rudimentary forms of public scrutiny and accountability.

While it is true that these trends are still far from resembling the mechanisms of full democratic civilian control, they have demonstrated their potential to encroach on the PRI pattern of civil-military relations. Equally important is these trends’ activation of institutional changes leading to cooperation, but also to conflict, between different agencies of the state. This has been particularly clear in the army’s hostile relations with the National Human Rights Commission, the executive branch and the security commissions of Congress.

Should the impartiality of the armed forces become part of the negotiating agenda of the main political actors? Many are urging a political pact to guarantee the neutrality of the armed forces in return for their support of a new democratic system. They base their case on the success of such a pact to the transition to democracy in Spain. Such a formula could offer safeguards to stop the army from becoming “a sword suspended over government” and could also bolster a consensus to make democracy work.

In the current climate, there is an even greater imperative for this, namely, the acute erosion of order over the past few years. Bringing the military into teamwork with civil authority would in any case be part of turning Mexico into a modern democracy. But the daily deterioration of public order and security is making the task all the more urgent. The army is being given ever more civilian responsibilities, such as taking over from the capital city’s ineffective police force. Even more alarming has been the collapse of a whole range of state institutions at the regional level. This breakdown has compelled the military to fill the vacuum in many instances. In Chiapas and Guerrero, the army has had to confront the dual challenge of civil violence and insurgent movements. In several states it has been pitched right into the forefront of the national war against drugs. Worse still, the army has been tainted by drug-related scandals involving some high-ranking officers.

Last week’s news report that 34 high-ranking military officers have been charged with collusion with drug dealers was revealing in two aspects: that drug-related corruption has reached such very high levels, and that there is an unusual frankness in going public with such information.

It is unfortunate that the exacerbation of the drug traffic problem in Mexico coincides in time with the transition to democracy.

The worry must be that the army will be infected by the same endemic institutional weakness that is responsible for its higher profile in national affairs. At the very least, its new, wider sphere of operations is going to affect the country’s traditionally stable civil-military balance.

One can appreciate why, with so much on their hands, nobody is picking up the telephone in the Department of Social Communication.

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