Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The initiative to create a new National Security Law proposed by President Sheinbaum has faced fierce and solid resistance, if not outright rejection, within the ranks of Morena in the Congress of the Union. Because of this resistance, the initiative has been evaded and defeated for months. It is now said that it could be approved, after some changes were proposed to reassure the Mexican Army, one of the staunchest opponents of the presidential initiative.
What is at the heart of the dispute? The presidential initiative proposes the “return” of the fight against organized crime to civilian hands in the country. It strengthens the federal Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) in its leadership role, minimizing the National Guard, whose effectiveness has been disappointing, to say the least. The difference is that the federal SSC is a civilian police agency, while the National Guard is a militarized police force under the Army.
In addition, and this is probably the casus belli of the central dispute, the presidential initiative hands over the entire intelligence establishment and the instruments for action on information on organized crime and drug trafficking to the federal SSPC. The Army is resisting this measure because it would require the disclosure of its confidential information to civilian bodies. Furthermore, the initiative places all the intelligence work of the UIF (Financial Intelligence Unit, which has been under the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit until now) under the command of the federal SSPC.
In addition, the National Intelligence Center, the Mexican state’s civilian intelligence agency, is now organically dependent on the federal SSPC. The presidential initiative strategically shifts the center of intelligence and decision-making in the Mexican state from its dispersion among various agencies to the creation of a central hub, making the SSPC the strategic brain of the Mexican state’s effort against organized crime, primarily drug trafficking.
The presidential initiative fundamentally changes the approach imposed since López Obrador’s six-year term on combating organized crime. The previous six-year term handed over all efforts against organized crime to the national army, even incorporating the National Guard as a supposedly police force within it. The SSPC under López Obrador was a mere spectator, helpful in making public announcements but irrelevant in security operations. Now, something very different is being proposed: leadership, decisions, and information will come from the SSPC, not the army.
The presidential initiative pits López Obrador’s vision against Sheinbaum’s on how Mexico should confront organized crime, and especially drug trafficking, in the context of the Trump era. This difference is central to the internal dispute within Morena. Legislators and members of Morena’s leadership have expressed their support for the “AMLO” vision and rejected the presidential initiative. This explains why Sheinbaum’s proposal has been delayed for such a long time.
López Obrador’s son, Andy, has been actively sabotaging the presidential effort. From his position in the Morena leadership, he has promoted his father’s opposition to the presidential initiative’s approval through figures such as Senator Gerardo Noroña and Congresswoman Citlalli Hernández. The crucial recipients of the message are Adán Augusto López, leader of the senators, and Ricardo Monreal, leader of the Morena deputies. That has been enough to halt the legislative progress of the presidential initiative. It also reflects the president’s political weakness concerning legislators in the federal Congress, where AMLO’s political weight remains overwhelming.
Underlying the entire debate is the figure of Omar García Harfuch, the primary beneficiary of the presidential initiative and secretary of the SSPC. Feared by radicals who are committed to AMLO’s continuity, García Harfuch is the favorite of the president and of the currents within Morena and the government that seek effective, sensible, and balanced change in public and national security policy.
And, it must be said, all eyes are on the 2030 presidential election, where the National Palace and Palenque have made it clear who their candidates are. And they disagree.
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