Latin America leaves public security in the hands of the military

The temptation to militarize public security to crush organized crime has become a persistent trend across Latin America, even though its long-term results raise serious concerns. Faced with the alarming rise of extortion, drug trafficking and contract killings, several governments in the region have deployed the armed forces to patrol streets, run prisons and maintain prolonged states of emergency.

The experience of countries such as Ecuador, Mexico and El Salvador shows, however, that military deployments often lead to unwanted increases in violence, the concentration of political power in the hands of the military and repeated allegations of human rights abuses. In contrast, cases like Chile and Argentina show greater institutional resistance to involving the military in policing duties, while Costa Rica continues to demonstrate that combating crime does not require an army, but rather financial intelligence and stronger civilian institutions.

Crime fighting and prison management in Peru

Giving the military a leading role in maintaining internal security is an old formula in Peru, one that tends to resurface whenever a new administration takes office. The approach has raised concerns among sectors of civil society.

Tania Pariona, executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinator, argues that while the military’s presence may increase the perception of security, it does not necessarily produce a lasting reduction in crimes such as extortion or contract killings. “The military are not trained for police functions; their main mission is to confront external threats or armed conflict,” she says.

Pariona also argues that expanding the role of the armed forces in public security can increase the risk of disproportionate use of force and new human rights violations. “Peru has historical precedents of abuses during the internal conflict, so there is particular sensitivity about expanding the military’s role in domestic affairs. Organized crime is fought with intelligence, financial investigation, specialized prosecutors, prison control and stronger police forces,” she explains.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that during the internal war that gripped Peru between the 1980s and the early 2000s, the military carried out an “indiscriminate repression against the population considered suspicious” of terrorism. An estimated 69,280 people died during the conflict, about 30% of them at the hands of state agents, according to the commission’s findings.

The memory of those episodes is intertwined with more recent events. Between late 2022 and early 2023, Dina Boluarte’s government again deployed the armed forces to control protests that followed Pedro Castillo’s ouster. About 50 demonstrators died from lethal ammunition.

The prominent role that President Keiko Fujimori envisages for the military would not be confined to the streets. The government has announced that it will seek legislative powers from Congress to push through a package of reforms, including one that would allow the armed forces to take over the administration and management of the country’s prisons.

Ecuador, allegations of abuse

On January 9, 2024, less than two months after taking office, Daniel Noboa declared, for the first time in Ecuador’s history, the existence of a non-international internal armed conflict. The decision allowed the immediate deployment of troops to the streets and transferred responsibility for public security and prison control to the armed forces.

At the time, Ecuador was experiencing one of the worst waves of violence in its recent history. The escalation had begun with the simultaneous takeover of seven prisons by criminal gangs and the detonation of car bombs in several cities. It reached a peak when armed men stormed TC Televisión, interrupting a live news broadcast and briefly taking members of the newsroom hostage.

The militarization strategy partially slowed the rise in homicides during its first months. However, from the outset it was accompanied by allegations of abuse and human rights violations. In the early stages of the operation, videos posted by soldiers themselves on social media showed detainees being subjected to punishment and humiliation. As the days passed, the accusations grew more serious, eventually including deaths in military custody, such as that of the young man Carlos Javier Vega.

That same year, the Attorney General’s Office opened investigations into the alleged forced disappearance of 43 people reportedly at the hands of military personnel. According to an Amnesty International report, the investigations progressed slowly and were hampered by a lack of cooperation from the armed forces.

The military amasses more power in Mexico

On December 11, 2006, after narrowly defeating Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the presidential election, Felipe Calderón, dressed in olive-green military attire, deployed 6,500 troops as part of Operation Michoacán Joint Deployment and declared war on the drug cartels. Since then, Mexico’s armed forces have never fully returned to their barracks. They patrol all 32 states, and with each successive administration, regardless of political ideology, they have amassed more power.

That trend began under Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) and continued under Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). But the period in which the military gained the most influence came under the left-wing government of López Obrador and his Morena party, which transferred to the armed forces resources and responsibilities that had traditionally been in civilian hands, to a greater extent than any previous Mexican administration. The irony is that a central plank of López Obrador’s campaign had been the promise to remove the military from the streets, citing the frequent allegations of human rights abuses committed against both suspected criminals and ordinary citizens.

In addition to formalizing the military’s policing role through the creation of the National Guard, a public-security force made up of military personnel and placed under military command, López Obrador’s administration also handed the armed forces control of customs operations. The military became a major public-works contractor and began operating airports, hotels, and even tourism-related companies, among other new ventures.

Despite allegations of corruption and mismanagement surrounding some of these activities, none of these responsibilities have been revoked during the presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum.

Costa Rica: crime on its doorstep but no army

A political decision taken in the mid-20th century made Costa Rica an outlier in the region when it abolished its army. Over the years, that singularity became a symbol of the country’s commitment to peace and progress, a source of national pride rooted in the idea that money not spent on weapons could instead be invested in education and healthcare.

Costa Rica also enjoyed a reputation as a safe country, a kind of “Central American Switzerland.” But with the turn of the century, it was eventually swept up in the wave of organized crime fueled by the immense profits of the drug trade, and it now appears to lack sufficient resources to confront the challenge effectively.

Without armed forces, without the funds to create them, and perhaps without the political or popular support needed to break with its deeply entrenched tradition as an unarmed nation, Costa Rica relies on civilian and judicial police forces to contain organized crime and violent gangs, with occasional support from international cooperation programs.

National spending on security is limited. Despite some increases in recent years, it hovers around 2% of GDP, while social spending faces cuts and drug-trafficking organizations exploit the economic vulnerabilities of thousands of households. It is a complex landscape that demands a comprehensive institutional response, one that, according to former attorney general Francisco Dall’Anese, could never be solved by creating an army.

“In other countries the armies have solved nothing,” says Dall’Anese, a criminal lawyer who also headed Guatemala’s now-defunct International Commission against Impunity (CICIG). ”The difference between a professional police operation conducted within the rule of law and a military operation is the same as that between laser surgery and a slaughter. It is clear that putting soldiers to fight drug-trafficking groups creates a spiral of violence. The solution is to restore civic spaces, dismantle criminal networks and bring people to trial, not resort to an ostentatious solution paid for in gallons of blood.”

Dall’Anese is not alone in that view. The current attorney general, Carlo Díaz, and Security Minister Gerald Campos agree, despite being at the center of an intense feud between the judiciary and the executive over how to tackle the crime wave, with both sides accusing the other of acting out of political motives.

Campos dismissed the need for an army: “No, the problem here is the lack of convictions in the courts.”

Díaz told EL PAÍS that he had at times wondered whether an army might be necessary, but ultimately concluded that it was not. “Sometimes you think you need forces to go out on the streets and have territorial control, but other places have shown they can fight criminality more effectively,” he said, citing Medellín, Italy and Scotland.

El Salvador: a permanent state of emergency

Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of emergency imposed by President Nayib Bukele in response to a series of massacres that underscored the violence of the country’s street gangs. The government argues that the measure has enabled it to dismantle the country’s notoriously violent maras. However, the security strategy, under which the emergency has been repeatedly renewed, has drawn criticism from human rights organizations.

El Salvador’s constitution allows a state of emergency to be declared in cases of war, natural disasters or serious disturbances of public order. But a report by an international panel of experts, whose findings were presented at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, alleges that Bukele’s government has committed crimes against humanity, including murder, the imprisonment of children, torture, sexual violence and enforced disappearances.

The state of emergency entails the temporary suspension of key constitutional guarantees, including the right to legal counsel, the 72-hour limit on administrative detention, the inviolability of private communications, and freedom of association. It grants the government the power to carry out mass arrests without a prior court order and without requiring suspects to be caught in the act.

Within this framework, the Salvadoran Armed Forces (FAES) have assumed a leading and permanent role in public security, blurring the constitutional boundaries established after the 1992 Peace Accords. The military not only conducts joint patrols and security cordons in towns and communities, but also directly carries out interceptions, searches and territorial operations alongside the National Civil Police, becoming the main operational arm of the state’s security policy.

Since the state of emergency was introduced in March 2022, Salvadoran authorities have reported more than 85,000 arrests. Civil society organizations and international bodies, including Amnesty International, have documented thousands of complaints of arbitrary detentions without due process, as well as hundreds of deaths in state custody.

With reporting by Renzo Gómez Vega (Lima), Carolina Mella (Guayaquil), Álvaro Murillo (San José), Carlos S. Maldonado (Mexico) and Carlos Carabaña (Mexico).

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