Mexico’s Outsourced Repression

Opinion for The Latino Newsletter

Editor’s Note: The Mexico Political Economist covers Mexican politics for global readers. It is a reader-supported Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.

It wasn’t just Donald Trump who wanted Mexico to pay for increased border security. Joe Biden was also keen to make Mexico pay to stop migrants from reaching the United States.

The current Democratic administration pushed the Mexican government to hand over $1.5 billion dollars across 2023 and 2024 for “smart” border technology.

Previous to President Biden winning the White House in 2020, under a Republican Trump administration, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mobilized the Mexican army to create a de facto “human shield,” both on the U.S.-Mexico border and the Guatemala-Mexico border.

“Mexico has become the wall” has been the refrain of the country’s critics. They point to a Faustian bargain where Mexico dodged the ire of a superpower by allowing itself to be subcontracted for American repression. This outsourcing, they argue, showcased the power wielded by the U.S., but also its dependence on Mexican acquiescence.

Outsourcing What’s Already Outsourced

Within Mexico, there is a similar pattern to outsource what the U.S. already outsourced. The top levels of the Mexican government are not actively doing most of the border security work. Instead, efforts have spread to the government’s lower levels or worse, to non-state actors like paramilitaries and organized crime. The outcome is the same as it was before. Communities are still deprived of lands and rights, violence is still rampant, and the interests of the powerful continue to triumph over the rights of the weak.

The Mexican government argues that —at least when it comes to non-migrant citizens—repression is a thing of the past.

For some of the most historically vulnerable in Mexico, namely Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities, the government has mainly focused on recognition, self-determination, and a degree of atonement.

Last month, a commission formed by López Obrador to investigate State crimes committed by his predecessors (and political adversaries) released its findings. The 3,510-page report shares bleak conclusions. Through “assimilation, simulation, and repression,” Mexico brutally cracked down on society’s most vulnerable.

Additionally, a constitutional reform proposed earlier this year has sought to give Black and Indigenous peoples the legal means to govern themselves with recognition by the State but without its intermediation. The head of López Obrador’s Morena Party in the Mexican Congress announced that this reform bill will be prioritized within the first weeks of the coalition’s upcoming supermajority.

It has not been enough.

Though well-meaning, these non-interventionist policies have come at the expense of the Mexican State abdicating responsibilities. Several voices have noted other forms of oppression conducted by lower levels of the State or those simply not beholden by the power of the President. These voices include the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (the Zapatistas) in Chiapas, the Afro-descendant activists in Guerrero, and even the commissioners charged with compiling the history of the government’s past excesses.

Assimilation: Beat Them or Join Them

Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities are still at the receiving end of Mexico’s repression. Their very existence does not fit the way the Mexican State sees itself, said Aleida Violeta Vázquez Cisneros, an Afro-Mexican activist from the historically Black town of Cuajinicuilapa, in southern Mexico.

The policy of mestizaje (the fabled miscegenation of European and Indigenous people) has been detrimental to Indigenous Mexicans, who have faced ethnic cleansing for resisting assimilation into Mexican-ness for sticking to their traditions and language.

It has been particularly bad for Afro-Mexicans. They weren’t even conceived of within Mexico’s imagined ethnic mix under mestizaje. The result has been harassment by Mexican authorities, most recently those charged with stopping migrants from reaching the U.S. border. Vázquez Cisneros told The Mexico Political Economist how she and other Black Mexicans are often stopped by migratory agents and asked to produce documentation proving their nationality.

The latest census shows that out of a population of 130 million in Mexico, 9.4% self-identifies as Indigenous and 1.2% as Afro-descendant. A much lower proportion than in any other moment of Mexican history, showing the brutal efficiency with which the policy of mestizaje worked.

Mestizaje might sound like a foregone Spanish colonial imposition, but it was most ruthlessly imposed by modern Mexico using modern tools. In the past century, as with most other organized social groups, the Mexican government under the PRI offered the option to be co-opted into its one-party rule or face repression.

Today, though López Obrador has eschewed the threat of violence, he has not done away with the equally menacing threat of government by assimilation. This is according to the Zapatistas, who broke with López Obrador in 2006, considering him an offshoot of the PRI.

The facts have borne out these fears. Under the current administration, when local Black or Indigenous community land rights clash with the central government’s pet projects, the Mexican State tends to come out on top. Often the President will invoke the general will of the rest of Mexico to justify these incursions, like when a plebiscite in the central state of Morelos drew votes from far afield to overwhelm the local communities’ opposition to a hydroelectric dam on their lands.

The ‘people’s will’ was again invoked in southern Mexico when the construction of a tourist rail project called the Maya Train was pushed through. According to Indigenous groups, as the government argued that it was happy to keep talking to disaffected opponents, organized crime descended on their communities. The army (which is building the rail lines) makes sure to defend its tracks, but its incursion into Indigenous land has reconfigured the balance of power on the ground and is driving armed gangs into their less defended communities. Many have fled to Guatemala.

There have been some triumphs. In 2020, Mexicans of African descent were added to the national census for the first time. “But this wasn’t a loving concession,” clarified Vázquez Cisneros. Afro-Mexican organizations “forced the government through international pressure.”

The Strength to Fill a Government-Shaped Hole

If the government is loath to look out for the weaker members of society, its own weakness shows when it is forced to work with more powerful actors. Realpolitik can be seen rearing its head as less than savory actors impose their will on the State or simply act with impunity.  

In states like Sinaloa, López Obrador and his Morena party have opted to give governorships to experienced political operatives aligned with the PRI over more ideologically-aligned choices. These governors, in turn, leave a lot of the governing to others. Sinaloa cartel boss, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, was allegedly kidnapped into U.S. custody while on his way to mediate between the governor and a political rival. 

In places like Chiapas, the state government seems to have lost control altogether. Power has reverted to armed self-defense groups and organized crime. The latter carries out extortion, people smuggling, and illegal mining.

The damage done by the power vacuum left by the democratically-elected government to non- or even anti-democratic forces is no more fittingly illustrated than in the showdown between the Mexican armed forces and the Commission created by the President to investigate the past crimes of the State.

“The Commission’s researchers were harassed at the Defense ministry’s archive to such a degree that we could no longer continue our investigation,” said Carlos Pérez-Ricart, a member of the Commission at a press conference while presenting their final report. “We were a presidential commission without presidential support.”

As talk of Morena’s unstoppable concentration of power after a landslide election builds, spare a thought for the parts of Mexico untroubled by the grip of the State.

Under Andrés Manuel López Obrador her predecessor and mentor, going after organised crime hardly seemed like a priority. On the contrary, López Obrador denied basic facts about crime in Mexico, claiming, for example, that fentanyl was not produced there. He also seemed oddly at ease comforting the families of known kingpins or lambasting US prosecutions of Mexican drug traffickers.

Sheinbaum faces a tough hand. Besides the security panorama, López Obrador has left office in a blaze of reforms, such as ensuring judges will be elected by voters.

López Obrador has now stepped down and Sheinbaum must outline her own security plan. During her campaign, her mantra was that she would bring peace to the country, just as she did in the capital. That would be a remarkable achievement, as homicides dropped by over 50% in Mexico City during Sheinbaum’s time as mayor (2018-2024).

The man credited with that success is by her side: Omar García Harfuch. He effectively presented himself to the public as a "soldier-cop" of sorts during his time as Sheinbaum’s security secretary in Mexico City. They’re now looking to recreate that success at a national scale, as the president has appointed García Harfuch as her federal Security Secretary.

World of Crime and The Mexico Political Economist jointly analyse her major priorities.

About the Author

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