The Security Challenge in Mexican Municipalities
The reality of Mexican municipalities represents the most vulnerable and punished link within the complex public security ecosystem of the nation. Tragic events like the murder of Carlos Manzo are not isolated incidents, but rather number in the hundreds. Political violence has become the perverse mechanism through which drug trafficking cartels cast their vote at the polls, silencing democratic voices through terror. This critical situation demands a deep review of protection strategies for public officials and social actors.
Carlos Manzo was fighting a battle that many considered lost beforehand. Any state or federal leader who demonstrates genuine determination to confront organized crime, regardless of his or her party affiliation or relationship with the government in power, faces the most finished product of the so-called war on drug trafficking: the progressive federalization of public security that has left local authorities in a state of abandonment.
The Federalization of Security and Its Consequences
The national security strategy, originally conceived in Michoacán, operates as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its design arises from the founding myth that presents the municipal and state police as the most corrupt and inefficient component of the system. To replace these segments considered “necrotized” of the State, the Federation has supplanted its functions with federal corporations: from the CISEN to the Federal Police, the Army, the Navy and the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic.
Beyond the validity of the initial diagnosis, reality shows that after two decades of single commands, coordination tables, mixed bases of operations and temporary interventions, local police institutions are rickety and suffocated by the systematic diversion of resources. These funds, which originally would have strengthened their operational capacity, have been allocated to the creation of gendarmeries, national guards, specialized deputy attorney general’s offices and national commissions that function as temporary palliatives but never as definitive structural solutions to the crisis of citizen insecurity.
The alleged moral incorruptibility and superlative efficiency of federal corporations compared to local ones is called into question in cases such as the death of Carlos Manzo. According to official information, the official died under the protection and custody of fourteen specialized bodyguards of the National Guard. In this specific context, it is impossible to consider the death of the main person under direct protection as an efficiency metric. A fundamental question then arises: why were military personnel assigned to his security instead of elements of the Federal Protective Service, whose training in physical security and executive protection is specifically designed for these functions?
The Limitations of Current Strategies
Federal corporations are not magical entities nor are they made up of infallible beings. The notorious scandals of Cienfuegos Zepeda and the nephews of Admiral Ojeda should serve as conclusive evidence that it is useless to replace a part of an affected organism with another component equally or more deteriorated than the original. It is also not effective to replace a defective element with another that, although not broken, lacks the specific usefulness required.
This is precisely the case of General Trevilla, current Secretary of National Defense, who during his period as commander of the 43rd Military Zone in Apatzingán maintained a low profile. Neither he nor any of the commanders of military zones and regions deployed in Michoacán during the last twenty years have managed to definitively pacify the state. Michoacán represents the epicenter where the war on drug trafficking began, and recurrently every three or four years it requires and demands micro-invasions and temporary occupation forces that return to the entity to alleviate -without definitively resolving- the collateral effects of the armed conflict.
Consequences and Strategic Reflections
Then an inevitable question arises: why grant the highest promotion, the Secretariat of National Defense, to a soldier who neither as zone commander nor as chief of the Defense Staff managed to implement lasting solutions in the territory under his responsibility? This question is not limited exclusively to Trevilla, but extends to numerous commanders deployed in Tamaulipas, Guanajuato or Sinaloa. The evidence suggests that the military simply has not been able to contain the complexity of the challenge.
Promoting a soldier exclusively following a ranking logic, without considering specific operational merits, sends a worrying message to the troops, police forces, public ministries and career intelligence analysts: their concrete achievements and results do not constitute the determining factor for professional progress. The only thing important is to accumulate years of service, trusting that the ranks will work their miracles through inertia.
The attack on Carlos Manzo’s life rigorously complies with the definition of terrorism established in the United States Code: it is a political murder carried out with the explicit intention of intimidating a specific community. If it had been committed under identical conditions within sovereign US territory, it would be prosecuted as a terrorist attack. The White House and the Pentagon are not concerned if after his death a “Michoacán Plan” is organized or if an investigation file for terrorism is opened. His definition of terrorism has an extraterritorial nature, constituting an additional argument to justify possible military interventions in Mexico and Venezuela under the pretext of combating “narcoterrorism.”
The transformation of the national security landscape requires an honest analysis of structural failures and the search for comprehensive solutions that strengthen all levels of government, from the municipal to the federal, in a coordinated and sustainable effort.
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