Peña Nieto and Prevention: Thinking about Mexico’s Violence in the Long-term

Although Mexico’s new president is implementing ambitious security reforms, a more long-term solution is needed to decrease violence in Mexico.
In the past few weeks, the newly inaugurated president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, has started to take his country’s security agenda in a surprising new direction. His plans to make changes to former President Calderón’s frontal assault on organized crime were no secret, yet his recent reforms may suggest a more direct break than he had let on. Not only did he push for swift establishment of a new public security force, but he also focused his energy upon measures to attack the socioeconomic conditions from which violence arises. Although President Peña Nieto’s new approach shows promise as a more comprehensive solution to crime and violence in Mexico, it fails to address a major underlying problem that will plague Mexico for years to come: how to reach out and reintegrate into society the criminals that plague the country.Peña Nieto had to grapple with a security landscape that has inherently changed in the past few years. Since 2006, the Mexican military has been heavily involved in community police-work, but has not functioned well. Its abuses of human and civil rights have caused public outcry throughout the nation. Despite these atrocities, the troops were successful in breaking down large criminal organizations. As a result, Peña Nieto instead finds himself contending with numerous smaller gangs competing for territory in cities and towns, and directly impacting Mexican citizens through extortion and kidnapping. Although less powerful, these gangs still outgun local police, and without the support of the public, the military has not been able to reduce the violence and improve the rule of law.Although it could be possible to simply equip and better train local police, this reform process is still up in the air. Instead, President Peña Nieto has found a “silver bullet” in the Gendarmería Nacional. Modeled after the Gendarmerie, the “military-style” police that have patrolled rural France for centuries, this new force will form an integral part of Mexico’s public security landscape moving forward. Peña Nieto plans to field 10,000, and eventually up to 40,000, of these officers in bases scattered around the country – a process already begun in the state of Chihuahua. The idea is that this force will have the necessary training and equipment to take on criminal groups, while acting as an effective locally based police force, with the hope that it will be able to reclaim public support.The success of the Gendarmería Nacional will be hampered by some of the limitations that have plagued public security in Mexico in the past. Recruits are being drawn from the military, meaning that they will be the same troops that have previously struggled with police work. As Alejandro Hope points out, there will also continue to be problems in coordination; similar to how the current military-police rivalry has been detrimental and counterproductive to security efforts, this new group’s mandate overlaps with those of the existing public security forces already in the country.However, this new force may be a good idea in the long run. If recruits are vetted to weed out those that are corruption-prone and coordination with other local law enforcement is improved, the gendarmes could not only provide the necessary firepower, but also build bridges between the state and rural population through integration with the communities that they are assigned to protect. Some studies show that Mexican citizens distinguish between different types of police in terms of reliability and corruption, meaning that this new group may be able to distinguish itself as reliable and capable, eventually helping to build public trust in Mexico’s criminal justice system. However, it would likely be years before this takes effect.The gendarmes could be a good start, but President Peña Nieto must also think in the long-term if he wants to deter violence. His recently released executive order for the creation of a “Commission for the Social Prevention of Violence and Delinquency” includes measures for poverty alleviation, reduction of inequality, education reform and other socioeconomic initiatives designed to address the “root” of the violence. Yet conspicuously absent from the executive order is a key factor in the violence prevention equation: provisions for outreach and reintegration of criminals, especially those in the smaller territorial groups.What, then, is to be done with the large numbers of young men involved in criminal activities in the country? President Peña Nieto seems to fall victim to the perception that two groups exist within Mexico: “citizens that deserve protection, and social groups from which those citizens need to be protected.” As in Colombia and El Salvador, Mexico will learn that it must account for the latter group to prevent violence in the long term.

Photo courtesy of Angélica Rivera de Peña via Flickr.