The State in Private Security: Examining Mexico City's Complementary Police (original) (raw)

Uneasy Partners Against Crime: The Ambivalent Relationship Between the Police and the Private Security Industry in Mexico

Latin American Politics and Society, 2017

Legitimation is a fraught process for private security companies operating in Mexico and other countries in the Global South where the police have a poor reputation. Mexican private security companies have an ambivalent relationship with the police, which causes firms to engage in two seemingly contradictory practices. Companies attempt to gain legitimacy by aligning with the image of the police to earn a sense of “symbolic stateness” while simultaneously distancing themselves from Mexico’s actual police forces so as to disassociate from the institution’s poor reputation. Consequently, collaboration between public and private security is limited, despite official attempts by the Mexican state to foster positive contact between them. Overall, this study contributes to the growing literature on private security by providing novel insights into the strategies private security firms utilize to navigate within states possessing delegitimated security forces state and the resulting lucrative political economy landscape.

A FAILURE TO IMPOSE CONTROL: PRIVATE SECURITY AND THE MEXICAN STATE

Lua Nova, 2021

Scholars tend to agree that imposing comprehensive regulations is one of the most effective strategies states can use to control and direct private security companies. This study shows how attempts to strictly regulate private security firms have failed in Mexico. The Federal government of Mexico, as well as each state government, has created some form of regulation to control the activities of the private security industry. In certain states, these regulations are more stringent than those in many countries. Nonetheless, corruption, weak enforcement, and high entry barriers have created low incentives for private security firms to abide by government regulations, leading to a widespread evasion and an expansive market of unregulated and undisciplined private security companies, thus bringing into question the efficacy of imposing strict private security regulations in states with weak institutions.

(In)Security and Self-Government: Lessons from the Mexican Experience

ICL Journal

Using the Mexican experience in the centralization of public security, this paper proposes federalism as a model of a vertical control of powers and, more importantly, a way of promoting self-governance, citizen participation and, through them, local security. We argue that while federalism as an organizational model of the State does not guarantee self-governance or citizen participation, it can help promote them and through their enhancement, improve security at the community level. Since 2006, the Mexican government has implemented a security strategy that has increasingly centralized public security decisions. The strategy relies on the deployment of federal security forces (Army, Navy and Federal Police) across the country, to replace or support state and local police. The results have been mostly negative. On one hand, there has been an exacerbation of violence in the country, including many incidents in which violence was used disproportionately or illegally by state official...

The Militarization of Public Security in Mexico: A Subnational Analysis from a State (Local) Police Perspective

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

Mexico’s public security has suffered a militarization process for at least two decades. Although there is consensus on this trend at the national level in the specialized literature, little research has been conducted on its subnational impact. To amend this gap, this article inquires the way in which militarization has permeated the structure and operation of subnational security forces beyond the local autocratic dynamics that reinforce militarization. Specifically, this article focuses on police reconfiguration regarding interaction with military in the six most violent states in Mexico: Jalisco, Nuevo León, Guanajuato, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Zacatecas. The qualitative analysis presented is based on 15 interviews and 18 focus groups with police offices and public security officials of these states. We argue that military presence on the streets and the arrival of the military-to-executive positions in public security institutions contributed to the adoption of military operating m...

Municipal police and organized crime. The case of Michoacán, México

V. 12, N. 02, 2019

This article analyzes the functions performed by municipal police to contain criminal activity in the state of Michoacán, Mexico; specifically in the ‘Hotlands’ (Tierra Caliente) in the 2000-2017 period. Using an ethnographic approach based on 35 in-depth interviews with key figures at the municipal level, we found that the police have been unable to control the advance of criminal activity. To make matters worse, there are cases in which they have become allies of delinquent groups. The lack of legitimacy of the police explains to a large extent their inefficiency. The study suggests that the only way out of the crisis of legitimacy facing municipal police forces is to strengthen the rule-of-law, consolidate democratic structures, and have the police adopt the role of mediators in social conflicts. Implementing structural solutions designed to improve the functioning of police in Mexico also demands enhancing the quality of the country’s democracy at the municipal level.

Citizen security in Mexico: Legacies of distrust

Latin American Policy, 2024

The article provides a backdrop to citizen security in Mexico, presenting a critique that challenges the democratic bases of citizen security and offering an alternate genealogy of its analytical and practical implementations. On the one hand, citizen security emerges not only from a violent legacy of national security but also amid larger international and domestic trends. Internationally, citizen security is consistent with shifts toward human security that prioritize individual existence over territorial integrity. Locating the citizen as its referent object, citizen security forwards a universal citizen situated against an ever-expanding list of threats. Domestically, citizen security coincides with wider neoliberal reforms premised on public-private partnerships and a reliance on individual responsibility. On the other hand, a separate genealogy of citizen security in present-day Mexico is offered, wherein its application is drawn from three interconnected themes-how citizen security emerges amid a political legacy of national security, how it develops from analytical limitations in human security, and how it operates in a context of neoliberal governance.

The Establishment of the Mexican Guardia Nacional (2012-2019): A Gendarmerie Force for Crime Wars and the Fourth Transformation of Mexico

Forza alla legge studi storici su Carabinieri, Gendarmerie e Polizie Armate; FVCINA DI MARTE 14, 2023

Mexico has embarked upon a fundamental reform of its security appa- ratus at the federal level under the leadership of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as part of his “Fourth Transformation” of Mexico. The Mexican Fed- eral Police and Gendarmerie forces have been absorbed along with significant numbers of former soldiers into the Mexican Guardia Nacional (GN – National Guard). The Mexican GN is a large gendarmerie force intended to have the ca- pacity to confront criminal armed groups (CAGs). The Guardia Nacional is in its nascent stages, but has already taken on myriad mission areas and has close ties to the Mexican military raising questions of civil-military relations and the impact on law enforcement. This paper focuses on the 2012-2019 period and the shift to the new GN force. It will provide policy recommendations for Mexico in the context of this new gendarmerie force and the profit motivated CAGs that threaten Mexico’s internal security.

Mexico: Internal security, surveillance, and authoritarianism

Surveillance & Society, 2017

The recent violence linked to drug trafficking in Mexico has been dealt with by the federal government by increasing police presence on the streets and involving the army in public safety activities. This has not decreased violence but has increased cases of human rights violation, and the capabilities of non-regulated surveillance and monitoring of the population. Thus, the new internal security law suggests that the police and the army will be able to “develop intelligence activities” by “any information gathering method.” They will also be able to require information from other authorities that they consider necessary to ensure “constitutional order,” as well as the “continuity” and “survival” of State institutions. The law has generated a wide public debate that contrasts two competing discourses.