THE SAME PROPOSALS TO ACHIEVE SECURITY AND PEACE IN MEXICO

The presidential campaigns have begun in Mexico, as well as the rest of the campaigns to elect a total of 20,708 positions at the local, state, and federal levels, in the June 2 elections.

Obviously, most attention is focused on the presidential candidates Claudia Sheinbaum of the Let’s Keep Making History Coalition (Morena, PVEM and PT); Xóchitl Gálvez of the Coalition Force and Heart for Mexico (PAN, PRI, and PRD); and Jorge Alvarez Máynez of the Citizen Movement.

Although there are many issues relevant to the population (economy, health, education, environment, migration, etc.), the main issue in all the surveys (with 70% of the respondents) is the insecurity and violence that have plagued the country for decades, without any government, regardless of party, having been able to solve or contain the problem.

International governmental and non-governmental institutions and agencies have provided data and indicators on the serious security crisis that Mexico is experiencing.

For example, the Institute for Economics and Peace, based in Sydney, Australia, has been conducting a Global Peace Index covering 163 countries for 17 years.

Mexico ranked 139th in 2022 and 136th in 2023, while the Geneva-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, released its Global Organized Crime Index, which evaluates 193 countries, in which Mexico was considered the most dangerous country in the world in 2023 in terms of organized crime.

However, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), an autonomous body of the Mexican State, the perception of insecurity in cities has decreased in the last 5 years (that is, during the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador), because while in 2018 more than 70% of respondents claimed to feel insecure in their city, by 2023, 61.4% of the urban population claimed to feel insecure in their city.

This figure has been widely publicized by President Lopez Obrador’s government as a sign that its “security strategy” is working.

On the other hand, the opposition parties point out that there is a significant increase in violence in the country, having reached the figure of 180,000 murders during the five years of López Obrador's government (and there are still seven months before his term in office ends), a figure higher than all the murders committed during the two previous governments (Peña Nieto 2012-2018; and Calderón 2006-2012).

Likewise, the number of missing persons during the López Obrador administration has already reached 45,000, more than in any previous administration since these statistics were collected (1962).

For this reason, the security strategy proposed by the presidential candidates will become the topic most analyzed and debated during the presidential campaign, and to which citizens will pay more attention.

Both Sheinbaum and Gálvez have already outlined the security policy they would apply if they became president of the Republic, and the truth is that none of them proposes anything new or different from what both the current and previous governments have already tried.

To allocate more budget to security; to professionalize and improve the working conditions of local and state police; to increase the number of members of the National Guard and expand its presence throughout the country; to improve the intelligence capabilities of the Mexican State; to improve coordination and collaboration between local, state and federal authorities; to establish closer cooperation agreements with the United States; to tackle the social causes that lead to delinquency among young people, etc.

All this that is being proposed by both candidates has already been proposed before and has usually not been implemented or has been poorly done.

Xóchitl Gálvez has wanted to differentiate herself a bit by proposing to build a mega prison, with extremely harsh measures in it, such as the one build by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, to intimidate criminals.

While Sheinbaum promises to continue with López Obrador's strategy of not confronting criminal organizations directly, but attacking the social and economic causes that foster criminality.

In addition, neither of the two main candidates in the presidential race has commented on the reform of prosecutors' offices, which are usually understaffed and under-budgeted, overworked and lack real autonomy to conduct proper criminal investigations.

Most likely, the presidential candidates will continue to promise the same things they always do, with the same kind of policies that have already been tried, and that have failed (especially to militarize public security), so that organized crime (along with its partners and accomplices in local, state and even federal governments) will continue to have the upper hand and, by the same token, will continue to hurt and plunder the Mexican people.