A police force by any other name

Ongoing changes to Mexico’s security apparatus reveal fewer soldiers and more spies.

The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

Despite decades of scorning their opponents that the National Guard would forever be under civilian command, earlier this year the full and final transfer to the Mexican armed forces was completed.

The National Guard was a security force created in 2019 by president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) to replace the old Federal Police corps. The National Guard’s members were drawn from these defunct federales as well as from branches of the Armed Forces, including the dissolved presidential bodyguard.

Today, activists and critics despair that the National Guard has only really served to move Mexico further down a spiral of militarisation and away from a civilian-led solution to its security crisis. The Mexico Political Economist found last year that the National Guard was chiefly being deployed to address the flow of migrants mostly of concern to the government of Mexico’s northern neighbour, rather than tackling domestic crime.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has publicly continued her predecessor’s security strategy. Her latest budget saw continued large cuts to the civilian-led Security Ministry whose budget has fallen by 22.1% in real terms between 2019 and 2025. The Armed Forces have grown by 4.6% in the same period.

Behind these broad numbers something new and more subtle is happening though. A different security apparatus—unique to Sheinbaum—has begun to emerge. As opposed to springing from a whole new enforcement force, as virtually all her predecessors this century have done, this apparatus is somewhat more decentralised—emerging from ministries and agencies in control of her closest officials.