Implications of the approval of the National Guard reform
By Inigo Guevara Moyano
Mexico’s National Guard (GN) existed only on paper for over a century. It was a theoretical reserve component created to mirror the US National Guard, mentioned in a variety of articles (10, 31, 35, 36, 73, 76, 78 and 89) of the Constitution to serve as a military auxiliary force. Throughout the past century, the GN had no regulation or organic law that could guide its implementation, mainly as there was no political will to raise state-level forces that could yield military capabilities.
Mexico has been struggling with the violence generated by transnational organized crime groups for more than three decades. As TOCs expanded their territorial footprint and increased their capabilities in terms of firepower and logistics, criminal violence increased and expanded throughout Mexico. TOCs began to fight each other for control of entry points and smuggling routes.
The idea that Mexico was simply a trans-shipment country subsided as local consumption beyond border towns brought waves of violence to Mexico’s interior, including major population centers and tourist destinations such as Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Cancun.
As state and municipal police forces became overwhelmed by TOCs, the Mexican government brought in the military to undertake large scale stabilization operations and at times, chirurgic actions.
At the same time that the government was forced to deploy the military -mostly the army but increasingly the Navy- on stabilization operations, it also began a set of parallel programs to professionalize and expand federal law enforcement agencies. One of the largest and most costly efforts was to create an intermediate force that could tackle large scale violence and support law enforcement with the appropriate firepower, intelligence, and logistics.
But several administrations struggled with what should be the most effective institutional design for such as force. From 2000 the Federal Preventive Police took shape, which was originally established with a mix of civilian law enforcement, military police, and marine units, reporting to a civilian Secretary of Public Security (SSP). This gave way in 2009 to the Federal Police which grew exponentially but in 2012 was reorganized as the National Security Commission under the Secretariat of the interior (CNS-SEGOB), while at the same time there was an attempt to create a hybrid force known as the National Gendarmerie that attempted to mix army, navy, and federal police units. The effort failed mainly due to the organizational challenge of having military units subordinate to civilian commanders and the National Gendarmerie was established as a purely civilian force in 2014, with only a shadow of what planners envisioned should be.
The Mexican government has a unique cabinet-level design that includes spots for two four-star military officers: Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) that has control of the Army and Air Force, and a Secretary of the Navy (SEMAR). As the National Gendarmerie struggled with legislative procedures and running into recruitment issues, SEDENA dramatically expanded its Military Police force up to 36,000 which fulfilled broadly the same role for which the Gendarmerie was established.
As part of a fast-track effort to bypass the procedural impasses experienced by previous administrations, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) announced the establishment of the National Guard commissioning most of SEDENA’s Military Police, SEMAR’s naval police, to serve alongside the legacy Federal Police and Gendarmeries units, appointing a soon-to-be retired two-star Army general as its first commander in April 2019. Six months later, the new force was up and running and had 81,000 personnel on strength.
Over the next five years, the GN continued to expand by recruiting 50,000 guards and taking on a wide variety of internal security roles that included providing security at ports of entry, federal highway patrols, and immigration enforcement. Besides Military Police units and an inflow of retired Army officers, active-duty Army officers were commissioned to serve as National Guard commanders serving as liaison officers with the military zone and region army commanders.
By design, SEDENA maintained operational control of the National Guard, however, its budget was controlled by the Citizen Security and Protection Secretariat (SSPC), the AMLO-era evolution of the previous CNS-SEGOB and SSP which as of 2024, amounted for 67% of the SSPC overall budget or MXN 70 billion (USD 3.6 billion).
The September 2024 National Guard reform formalized the transfer or reintegration of the National Guard to SEDENA, further clarifying it as a military force with police training, rather than the previous -oxymoron- of it being a civilian police force with military training. Through this reform, the national Guard becomes the fourth branch of the Mexican armed forces. The reform states that it is to be led by a three-star General officer (instead of a civilian commander) and all of its members will have full military benefits. The reform leaves around 15,000 former federal police which will remain in the SSPC, where they will form the nucleus of a new civilian National Police.
The reform helps define the separation of functions between homeland security (National Guard) and more traditional law enforcement (National Police) activities which is expected to be positive as it will lead to specialization of roles and missions.
Inigo Guevara Moyano is the managing director of Janes Strategic Services, the consultancy arm of Janes, a global open-source intelligence company specializing in military and national security. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and is a former director of analysis of the Office of the National Security Council of Mexico.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
