These days, it is easy to find reports from consulting and law firms trying to reassure investors that, despite the destruction of Mexico's judiciary, arbitration and other dispute-resolution mechanisms appear to remain viable substitutes for settling conflicts in the country.

The Reassurance That Isn't

Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are, at best, a false substitute, momentary relief for a handful of cases and for a select few, but by no means a replacement for a serious, independent national judiciary. The uncertainty and damage caused by Mexico’s judicial counter-reform mean that a range of actors now have to innovate, doing damage control and reducing risk through alternatives external to and independent of what is still misleadingly called Mexico’s Judiciary.

The overtures and agreements that other countries pursue with Mexico now require new forms and strategies to compensate for having to operate with a government that lacks a traditional separation of powers. It was therefore to be expected that mechanisms would begin to emerge to substitute for (and pull away from) the federal judiciary: alternatives meant to contain the distrust and the threat that this new political arrangement (more political than judicial) generates both inside and outside the country.

Corporate America Wants an Exit

In a letter sent late last year to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the business group Business Roundtable, which brings together CEOs of major U.S. multinationals, urged the following in its section on Mexico:

“To mitigate the risk stemming from politicized judicial systems, the Roundtable strongly recommends that the Office of the Representative consider reinstating the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism with Mexico. Over the past five years, Mexico has adopted several troubling measures that have negatively affected U.S. investments in the country […]. By fully restoring the ISDS system in Mexico, U.S. investors would have the option of resolving their disputes through independent arbitrators. The mere existence of the ISDS mechanism would likely lead political actors to reconsider decisions such as expropriating investments or pressuring the courts to serve political interests.”

This is one example of how uncertainty is beginning to change the way other countries see, treat, and trade with Mexico. Some recent negotiations and overtures show that, as a condition for investing in Mexico, parties are demanding more reservations, conditions, and independent bodies to check an unpredictable government that lacks reliable mechanisms for resolving disputes and guaranteeing access to justice.

Brussels Hedges Its Bets

A recent case illustrates this pattern of caution and reaction. In May, a round of negotiations between Mexico and the European Union that began in 2016 came to a close, and on July 8, the European Parliament approved the Modernized Global Agreement and the Interim Trade Agreement. This agreement will replace the Global Agreement, which governs commercial relations between the two parties. On the question of dispute resolution, however, the agreement introduces a significant departure from traditional investment-arbitration models: it establishes a permanent tribunal.

A Court Built on Distrust

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The confusion about Cuba is a symptom of something far deeper:

The collaboration is not new. In February 2023, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) awarded Miguel Díaz-Canel the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor given to foreign nationals. The ceremony highlighted bilateral cooperation in healthcare, especially the deployment of Cuban doctors to Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Cuban financing mechanism that, in November 2019, was questioned by UN rapporteurs over concerns that working conditions were likely considered forced labor.

It was known that the former president and founder of the Morena party held a proud and romantic vision of dictatorship. Today, this political stance remains unchanged. In line with her predecessor and the party, in October 2025, President Sheinbaum announced that she would not attend the Summit of the Americas in Dominican Republic, citing the same argument AMLO used to sabotage the summit in Los Angeles in 2022: both leaders openly said they would not attend events that excluded the dictatorships of the hemisphere: Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela. Being consistent, and more recently, Sheinbaum was among the few leaders who refused to congratulate Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado on her Nobel Peace Prize; asked to respond to the award, Sheinbaum offered a “no comment” reply.

It is fondly remembered in Mexico’s national history how the country stood alone in 1962 in defense of Cuba as the only nation to abstain from voting in favor of the island’s expulsion from the Organization of American States, opposed the imposition of economic sanctions and maintained diplomatic relations with Castro’s government. But those were different times, and the position had a logic in the context of the Cold War; it was an arrangement that allowed Mexico to serve as an intermediary and avoid a total shutdown of communications between Washington and Havana.

Today, the former practical arrangement has been transformed into a series of lame and confusing excuses. With the fall of the Maduro regime in January, Mexico automatically became Cuba’s first oil supplier. After the fact, the government justified the new state of affairs as benign “humanitarian aid”. It made no effort to devise any strategy or explanation to differentiate between the Cuban people and the criminal regime. Likely, the Mexican government believed that being Cuba’s last supplier would give it leverage to mediate and negotiate as it had in the past. But a portion of the equation was out of place: Mexico’s previous role as an intermediary cannot be maintained by a leader and political party that has openly supported the dictatorship. To the contrary, the government has now irresponsibly placed the country in an unstable position during a year that required methodical planning and prudence to safeguard the country’s economic future.

Support for the regime is not new. Mexico has sent oil to Cuba since the 1970s. Still, the newly disclosed quantities and schemes of the Sheinbaum administration are more serious, at least for four reasons: the tense geopolitical context and priorities of the Trump administration in the hemisphere, the significant increase of oil shipments in 2025, the trade interests that Mexico must prioritize and safeguard in 2026, and the current ruinous financial state of Pemex.

As the US threatened countries that ship oil to Cuba with tariffs, Sheinbaum said in a morning press conference that the foreign ministry had to “explain to the State Department the meaning of a humanitarian crisis,” and that would solve things. Yet this both provocative and submissive stance vis-à-vis Washington is also promoted at a time when Mexico is more isolated than ever. During the last few years, Mexico has lost allies in Latin America. Peru severed diplomatic relations with Mexico more than two months ago in protest over Sheinbaum’s decision to grant asylum to former prime minister Betssy Chávez, who had been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison on rebellion charges. Previously, in April 2024, Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Mexico after granting asylum to former vice president Jorge Glas, whom Ecuador considers a convicted criminal evading justice.

The decision regarding Cuba is not only domestically imprudent, but also sends a signal of irresponsibility abroad, making the country vulnerable on other foreign policy fronts, such as trade negotiations. This is a carelessness that competitors will seize on; it will be difficult, for example, to support the USMCA and its ideological underpinnings whilst backing the Cuban dictatorship. In reality, the problem is that Mexico lacks a clear foreign policy toward Cuba, because that would first require differentiating between Cubans and the regime; without that, the humanitarian arguments naturally fall apart.

As days passed and the pressure from the US government increased, the complicity became more manifest. Journalists disclosed that Pemex reported to US authorities only 13 percent of the actual value of the crude oil and refined petroleum products it shipped to Cuba in 2025. The Mexican government has handled oil deliveries with extreme opacity, contradicting its recent, self-congratulatory narrative of pride in providing humanitarian aid and has veiled oil donations as purchase agreements. Following consistent nonpayment, the debts are eventually forgiven and recognized as a loss.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the close association between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez allowed Cuba to receive 100,000 barrels per day from Venezuela. So far, in 2026, the island has received only one shipment from Mexico, totaling 84,000 barrels, which would translate to approximately 3,000 barrels per day. Mexico has been sending oil to Cuba for decades. Still, since Sheinbaum took office in October 2024, shipments to Cuba have tripled, according to a new report by the civil organization, Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity. Between January 1993 and November 2025, Mexico’s oil exports to Cuba totaled more than $1.947 billion. Still, fifty-seven percent of that amount was shipped during the first 13 months of Sheinbaum’s administration, according to data from Mexico’s central bank.

According to some estimates, Mexico sent 12,000 barrels per day to Cuba in 2025 and from May to August 2025 alone, $3 billion, three times the roughly $1 billion delivered over the previous two years, during AMLO’s administration. The total support to Cuba has accumulated an estimated debt of 27.569 billion pesos. Moreover, there are suggestions that oil imports are not only for domestic consumption but also sold to obtain foreign currencies. Besides the negative standing growing from these decisions and indecisions, it is important to note that the oil was provided by a bankrupt company unable to pay suppliers and carrying the infamous tag of being the “most indebted oil company in the world” with accumulated liabilities totaling 84 billion, in the most conservative estimates. As a mismanaged company, its production has steadily declined, mainly because its administration has been guided by ideological whims that have thwarted necessary partnerships with the private sector, and because financial constraints have left the company unable to pay suppliers and service providers, disrupting operations and undermining productivity.

The reaction to replacing a lifeline long supplied by the Maduro regime was entirely foreseeable. Attempting to step into any of Maduro’s roles was never a prudent foreign policy move. Sadly, it is consistent with a trend of isolationism and the prevalence of partisan ideologies. The confusion about how to deal with Cuba, its regime, and the US is a symptom of a broader confusion about Mexico’s foreign policy direction, especially harmful in 2026, when the country precisely needs to navigate complex trade negotiations and reinforce its position in North America. Unfortunately, the current ambivalence will be hard to reverse because it stems from giving precedence to party factions rather than national strategic priorities.

Despite its magnitude and importance, the latest corruption scandal involving the Mexican Navy was hardly unexpected. It was a predictable consequence of Mexico’s increasing militarization of civic life. The recently revealed corruption scheme to smuggle fuel into Mexican ports is an outcome of the exponential growth of military activities that the government has so stubbornly promoted at the detriment of civilian government prevalence. The scandal is the result of the combination of the opacity that characterizes the armed forces and the cuddles of the regime

The plot revolved around reclassifying tanker cargo to evade taxes and appears to be tied to a broader network with linksto drug trafficking. The scandal came to light in March, when authorities seized oil tankers carrying stolen fuel in the port of Altamira. One of the vessels was transporting diesel subject to a special import tax, but the shipment was fraudulently declared to customs as a tax-exempt petrochemical. What began as a fuel smuggling case quickly expanded, implicating two nephews of former Navy Secretary, Admiral Rafael Ojeda, who served under President López Obrador.

Days before U.S. Senator Marco Rubio visited Mexico, federal authorities arrested 14 people across several states, including five active-duty marines. Those detained included customs officials, businessmen, and six military officers, among them a vice admiral. Fuel theft, known in Mexico as huachicol, has cost the state-owned oil company Pemex an estimated US $3.8 billion over the past five years, according to the Associated Press. The exposed web of complicities stretches from the ports of Ensenada and Guaymas, in Sonora and Baja California, to Altamira and Tampico, in Tamaulipas, and runs through Coahuila and the port and customs of Manzanillo. But the corruption scheme likely goes beyond what has been revealed so far.

Militarization is a political capitulation in any democratic government. Hence, the troublesome trend received long-standing criticism from the opposition as a retreat from democratic best practices. Contrary to popular opinion, it is also a process that does not lead to the strengthening of the armed forces; it is a damaging and ultimately degrading path for armed institutions. Conceding the army manifold responsibilities leads to their weakening and corruption as they try to comply with activities for which they were not designed or trained. Militarization implies the relaxation of military discipline to comply with a growing package of undertakings; the mounting demands create a widening gap between what they are asked to do and what they can do, corrupting their discipline and internal proceedings.

The critiques about the rising role of the military were mostly concerned with the following admonitions. First, it was unconstitutional: the Mexican Constitution is clear about the exceptional role of the military in times of peace. Second, it was ineffective as a public policy and could not be adopted as a credible public security strategy: the armed forces cannot function as a police force because they are not trained as such and are not designed to deal with and investigate crime. Third, it was undemocratic: democracies must have a clear separation between the civilian and the military spheres. Finally, (and related to the current scandal), it was going to harm the armed forces by increasing the opportunities for corruption. The warnings materialized: this was a foretold crisis. But besides the economic impact of corruption, politically, the scheme has debunked a myth about the armed forces that the political regime has assembled to sustain and promote itself. Militarization has a decades-long history, but the tendency was exponentially exacerbated during former president Andrés López Obrador’s (AMLO) administration, and it intensified an existing false assumption: a mythology of the armed forces as a pristine and immaculate institution.

During the XX century, the Mexican government had a pragmatic understanding with the army. An agreement that implied autonomy in exchange for distance from civilian politics. The political system placed the army in a distant and protected sphere that fostered high social regard and approval, which nevertheless came from remoteness and sporadic approaches, not their proximity. The armed forces were never expected to comply with the traditional schemes of oversight and scrutiny. Their social renown was a product of an assumed superior ethics, which could only be sustained by distance and a certain degree of opaqueness: Their prestige, paradoxically, came from distance, not closeness. Soldiers were mostly out of sight and occasionally appeared to help – i.e., during natural disasters.

This massive corruption structure was a consequence of a political arrangement that gives prevalence to the armed forces. Yet corruption scandals of this magnitude could only result not only from further erosion of civilian oversight but also from the coddling and protection from the current regime. Likewise, the stretching and abuse of the notion of “national security” in recent years has also aggravated the past arrangements of opacity as a concept that involves the loss of transparency in exchange for increasingly ambiguous and unclear partisan motivations.

The foreseeable political effect of the current corruption investigations goes against the central discourse of the regime and entails crucial contradictions. The ruling political party, Morena, used the mantra of an immaculate army as the best and only strategy to fight corruption. However, AMLO’s motto, “Hugs, not bullets,” was not just a catchy phrase; it is a dangerously consequential political stance. If the current government tries to remove the “hugs” part, it falls under the contradiction of upsetting part of the political arrangement that underpins the party. The recent law enforcement operations undermine the foundations of the regime because some of the suspects are part of the political alliance.

The Morena party has built political arrangements with inherent structural weaknesses that have fostered this kind of corruption, and the president now faces the reality that altering them would require reshuffling the alliances sustaining her party and administration. Abandoning the “hugs, not bullets” strategy carries deep political consequences, since confronting organized crime would destabilize the very structures of power that underpin her movement.

Through militarization, the armed forces have become a less reliable actor in Mexico: they stopped being an element of political stability and became an additional factor of turbulence and volatility in a country already pillaged by organized crime. The armed forces were, and should be, an institution above governments and party politics; yet today, as an active political actor, they are placed underneath, not just the government but a political party. This is an arrangement predictably bound with corruption.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, will not govern the political order she has helped construct. Under the guise of a so-called “judicial reform,” she has championed the creation of a new political system, one that now lies beyond her control. In their relentless pursuit of domination, she and her party failed to establish a coherent regime, instead unleashing a disordered and volatile landscape they neither fully understand nor command. She likely believed she was inheriting the rewards of a master plan orchestrated by the López Obrador administration to concentrate power. In reality, she accepted a Faustian bargain, one that now threatens to consume its intended beneficiaries.

Illiberal regimens indeed have to subdue and weaken the judiciary not only because they are barricades against arbitrariness, but because judicial systems are complex arrangements, hard to redesign and reestablish; any attempt by the opposition to reestablish the rule of law will be an arduous and lengthy process: national legal systems go beyond norms, bills, lawyers, and judges; they shape and constitute practices, mores, and attitudes that are hard to reconstruct.

The president and the ruling party, which no longer complies with her wishes, will control some judges, maybe most of the time, but not all the time; and it is precisely in this projection of inconsistency that a sign of weakness will prevail instead of power and control.

This was a reform not just designed to weaken the judiciary but to distribute it as a bounty; as in any corrupt scheme or proposition, the supporters expected their reward and part of the spoils. Likely, the president thought she would be spared from the unpredictable and anarchic environment that she sponsored; most likely, she will be a victim.

The change she endorsed creates a system with fewer rules and greater uncertainty, a new dynamic that allows no exceptions for assurances. Just as in Mary Shelley’s novel, where Dr. Frankenstein’s creature becomes autonomous, misunderstood, and dangerous, this reform sets in motion a judiciary that is neither accountable nor loyal, only unpredictable. The assumption was that she could exploit this system to her advantage. But once created, a system built on vague rules and weakened procedures does not ensure loyalty. It defies, embarrasses, and ultimately consumes its creators. The chaos is not a flaw; it is the very essence.

Like Shelley’s doctor, she may find herself haunted by the very forces she helped unleash. The novel offers a warning about the consequences of failing to take responsibility for one’s creation, which leads to disaster. The creature becomes violent, but more importantly, it develops a will of its own. Victor believes he can create life and control it. Similarly, Mexico’s ruling party sought to dominate the judiciary while overlooking the broader role an independent judicial system plays in a democracy. Courts are not just obstacles to power; they are essential arenas for resolving political and legal disputes through legitimate means. By undermining them, the president forfeited this possibility.

Organized crime, local political elites, factions within Morena, business leaders, and various other de facto powers all intervened in the electoral process. Each of these actors will now seek to reap the rewards of their investment. The president is merely one among them. While she may enjoy particular leverage through the disciplinary tribunal—an institution endowed with sweeping and arbitrary authority to subdue and punish judges—exercising this power will require the constant expenditure of political capital and the implicit threat of coercion. To bend the now shattered judiciary to her will, she will need to invest substantial time, energy, and influence to outmaneuver the many other actors who have also staked their claims in this newly corrupted order.

The reform never came as a result of a diagnosis of what was insufficient or could be improved in the past system. The reform was ratified in an environment of constant legal and rhetorical attacks against judges. Former president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) was always open about his intentions and opinions about the judiciary: "The corrupt judges are they going to continue defending foreign companies that come to loot, rob and affect the economy of Mexicans?” The Supreme Court presented a major obstacle during his administration, striking down several of AMLO’s flagship initiatives, including a constitutional reform that would have placed public security entirely under military control and an energy reform aimed at eliminating private investment in the sector.

Faced with these setbacks, the ruling party concluded that an independent court was incompatible with its political agenda. The judicial overhaul was never intended to address corruption or nepotism within the judiciary. From the beginning, its purpose was political control, not institutional strengthening. Yet even critics and opposition figures inadvertently lent legitimacy to the effort by repeating the claim that some form of reform was needed.

It is this background that today judges have complained about the problem of carrying out a campaign after years of hostility and false accusations. Despite government propaganda of democratizing the judiciary, the reform is not designed to empower citizens to elect judges. Instead, candidate lists were pre-approved by committees controlled by the ruling Morena party, operating without transparency or clear guidelines. These committees, responsible for verifying candidate eligibility and preparing final lists, were deliberately designed to fail. Their chaotic structure and apparent incompetence provided the party with an opportunity to quietly insert preferred candidates, underscoring that the reform's true objective was obscurity rather than openness.

Alongside the federal process, 19 states will also hold local judicial elections to elect approximately 1,800 other openings. These procedures will be just as chaotic and compromised as the federal one. In several states, local and party officials are competing for judicial posts, raising serious concerns about conflicts of interest. In some cases, local authorities failed to even compile the required lists of candidates, leaving voters with no options on the ballot. In states like Durango, selection committees approved only one candidate per vacancy, essentially preselecting most judges before the election even took place.

There is a prevalent consensus that the judicial elections cannot yield fair results. At least eight states have complaints about a lack of sufficient funding to organize the election, and the 60 newly created electoral districts were made hastily and appear intentionally designed to favor localities where Morena holds a political advantage, suggesting possible gerrymandering. Moreover, for the first time, these elections will deviate from democratic standards established during Mexico’s political transition: votes will no longer be counted directly at polling stations under citizen supervision.

Additionally, the complexity of the ballots will likely discourage voter participation. For instance, just for choosing the most relevant position, Supreme Court justices, citizens will be required to select from a list of 64 candidates. Voters will handle at least six federal ballots, with additional ones depending on their state of residence; in Mexico City, for example, voters will receive as many as nine ballots, blocking an independent and informed vote.

Furthermore, and as it was expected, organized crime has already become embroiled in the process. Some 26 candidateshave been accused of ties with criminal networks, but the formerly independent but now also captured National Electoral Institute claimed that, given that the ballots are already printed, it is too late to remove from the election those candidates accused of ties with organized crime.

A country with no independent judiciary makes the party more able to subdue opposition and impose its will, but slashes capacity in everything else. The partisan calculation disregards the tradeoff that destroying institutions to amass partisan power makes the government weaker, as it lacks the institutional clout and expertise for conducting, for example, international negotiations, diplomacy, and resolving trade disputes.

The judicial reform carries significant economic implications for Latin America’s second-largest economy. Undermining judicial independence violates key international commitments, such as Chapter 29 of the USMCA, which mandates impartial tribunals for dispute resolution. The negative impact on economic stability and foreign investment is already evident. Moody’s recently warned that "the judicial overhaul will erode checks and balances, risking undermining Mexico's economic and fiscal strength," subsequently downgrading Mexico’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

Starting in June, no one in Mexico will have the right to due process or the assurance that an impartial tribunal will resolve their claims. For the few professional judges who remain in their positions, a new sword of Damocles will hang over them in the form of the new disciplinary tribunal, which threatens punishments for any deviations from party directives. Before the reform, a Federal Judiciary Council oversaw the discipline, promotion, and dismissal of federal judges. Now, punitive actions against judicial officials will be handled by a new Discipline Tribunal that will have extensive authority, including the power to suspend judges and initiate criminal charges, all without the possibility of appeal. By centralizing disciplinary powers and eliminating recourse for sanctioned judges, this tribunal will considerably influence judicial decision-making, ensuring conformity to party directives.

Yet the uncertainty that the new political arrangement will create goes beyond investments and businesses. There will be fewer rules and protections for families regarding their patrimony, no certainty for victims of crime that criminals will be sentenced, and employees will be less protected against their employers. The calamity in the judiciary will spread to a governability crisis, every dispute will be sent to a realm of arbitrariness, luck, frail negotiations, and corruption, with the inevitable and corresponding degeneration of people taking justice into their own hands.

The reform violates international judicial precedents and standards, particularly of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has defended the impartiality and independence of judges and expressed concerns about the “lack of due process guarantees” in the disciplinary system. But complaining about the election’s disorganization misses the point. The confusion and unpredictability were intentional, necessary elements to facilitate a political takeover. A fair and transparent process would have prevented the party from capturing the judiciary.

This was never about a genuine popular election of judges; rather, the party deliberately designed and managed the process behind opaque rules that ensured dysfunction. The chaos was not accidental but strategic. Far from being a flawed reform plagued by shortcomings, the initiative will achieve its true objective, party control. Critics who argue the reform lacked a thorough, technical diagnosis misunderstand its purpose: it was never meant to improve the judiciary but rather to subordinate it politically.

Although framed as progress, this political change will hurt Mexico while consolidating the ruling party’s dominance. Fraud requires a language packaging: the label “reform” suggests initial diagnosis and improvement. Yet scams make the victims believe they are earning something that is being stolen, and their success lies in making the victims feel empowered in their disenfranchisement.

The hazardous compulsion for a military takeover of civil institutions in Mexico has been the trademark of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s presidency. A recent study by CIDE University found that, between 2006 and 2021, over 246 government functions, previously in charge of civilian authorities, have been handed over to the Mexican armed forces. Yet what started as a public policy, constrained to public security (militarization), has now altered the whole Mexican political system (militarism). Sustained changes in quantity lead to a change in quality; numbers have turned into something else. If we can’t stop counting, then we are not just talking about numbers anymore.

It is important to highlight two common misunderstandings about Mexico’s new militarism: this is not a security strategy, not even a failed one. This is a political undertaking; using the army for political ambition and appeals to “security” is the smokescreen and costume. Secondly, militarism is not tantamount to strengthening the armed forces. This feverish and dicey endeavor has generated a debilitating effect -weakening the army by granting them manifold public contracts without any transparency mechanism, drastically raising corruption, and bestowing them with civilian functions they will never be able to accomplish -given their essence and training-, such as public security.

The following are some political implications and conjectures about the ongoing and accelerating militarism process in Mexico:

1. Militarism implies a shift in loyalties and alliances for the armed forces: from a constitutional framework to a personal and partisanship fidelity. Militarism will upset the army’s previous and well-deserved high social esteem and approval as corruption scandals accumulate and it becomes identified as supportive of a political party or, even worse, a personal political project.

2. Where do we come from? In the past, the government had a tacit and pragmatic understanding with the armed forces. The settlement implied a high degree of autonomy (certainly also opacity and corruption) in exchange for distance from politics and the civil sphere of government -it is not surprising that Mexico is one of the few countries in LATAM that didn’t suffer a military coup in the 20^th century. The understanding and objective within the political elite was to keep the military “far away and happy”; today, we have groups in the army who are “close and angry” as they are ordered to perform tasks they are not prepared to do. Corruption seldom benefits evenly or everyone.

3. The armed forces are not a homogeneous entity. Its essence as a vertical institution will exacerbate internal divisions and resentments between the military elite, which benefits from corruption, and the larger group of soldiers in the lower ranks, on the other hand. The known corruption scandals are, and will likely remain, connected to the higher rungs of the military hierarchy.

4. Militarism is dangerous because it implies a different rationality for government action, usually exogenous from the civilian logic and considerations that should prevail in democratic systems. Government offices, many recently overtaken by military personnel, require and are hugely dependent on civil bureaucracies with high technical capabilities. For several institutions, a military command instantly turns them superfluous and futile. Military codes such as efficiency and control are not the only guiding principles in most civil bureaucracies and agencies.

5. The armed forces are not prepared (nor should they be) to deal with the public and political scrutiny that militarism entails. Their political limelight does not imply, and will not be translated, into the required political prowess to deal with the spotlights of what being a politicized army will unavoidably imply. This will open another flank to an already besieged institution.

6. Under a constitutional framework, and before militarism, civil bureaucracies and institutions provided political channels and buffer zones to protect the army, allowing it to halt and dodge political threats. Historically, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB) worked as intermediaries, interlocutors, and shock absorbers between the army and U.S. agencies, for example. The channeling of sensitive issues with foreign governments with the lowest possible direct contact with the armed forces was a responsible civil shield for the armed forces. The Mexican army is not an appropriate institution to handle most dialogues with foreign or international security agencies single-handedly.

7. Militarism implies a certain contradiction: extending huge budgets and responsibilities while assigning incompatible tasks. This widening gap between what they are asked to do and what they can do will corrode one of their main attributes: discipline and internal rules and proceedings. Militarism implies the relaxation of military discipline to comply with a growing package of political responsibilities.

8. Within the vast array of newly assigned tasks, the natural tendency will be to focus on those representing more profits and lesser risk, such as customs control and public infrastructure construction.

9. The process is a blow to the federal system. The military expansion includes capturing local and municipal governments and agencies. Military personnel have repetitively been appointed to key local security positions.

10. Militarism has created blurry limits and confusion between state, government, and party responsibilities. The division between national security and public safety is now scrambled with the defense of a political party. For the first time in modern history, a Mexican Minister of Defense publicly supported a political party.

11. If the army identifies itself with a political party that persistently defines enemies, the military will adopt the same enemies, increasingly directing resources to political targets. Recently, the general in charge of the militarized National Guard publicly included a Supreme Court Justice in a “black list.”  

12. In the initial stages of his administration, AMLO declared that “if it were up to him, he would disappear the armed forces.” His actions have confirmed this intention. Disappearing the army meant corrupting it, annexing it as a partisan tool.

13. Militarism will probably enhance closeness, communication, and collaboration with armies in dictatorships like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

14. The army’s delivery of social programs and benefits is an essential component of militarism, as it enhances its political role and responsibility. For example, the army was responsible for constructing the government bank branches that deliver monthly payments to elderly people.

15. Through the ideology of militarism, the army will become a less reliable and unstable actor. It will stop being an element of political stability and become an additional factor of political turbulence and volatility. In the past, the army self-described itself as an institution “above the government”; today, as a political actor, it places itself underneath not just the government but a political party.

Militarism is a demotion and a degradation, both morally and politically. A great shame and humiliation for an indispensable Mexican institution but, more importantly, a betrayal for the thousands of Mexican soldiers who joined the armed forces for the right reasons.