The Mexican National Guard has been the subject of a total of 1,254 complaints of Human Rights violations since it began operating in July 2019, in what is one of the flagship projects of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government.
The agency has been reported to the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) for arbitrary detentions, failure to comply with formalities in searches, arbitrary use of public force, cruel and inhumane treatment, torture and deprivation of life, according to the newspaper ‘El Universal’.
Also mentioned are alleged violations committed in the development of the attributions that the agency has assumed in customs matters, in the migration strategy and in the fight against the theft of hydrocarbons.
The National Guard is thus the security agency with the most complaints, ahead of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena), which accumulated 1,605 complaints between January 2019 and November 10, 2022. Far behind is the Secretary of the Navy (Semar), which has received 511, according to CNDH data.
«The National Guard is not a body alien to human rights violations, contrary to the official discourse that says that in Mexico these have already been eradicated,» said the director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, Santiago Aguirre. The National Guard «is replicating the patterns of use of force and opacity that we knew of the Army».
The National Guard has been at the center of the political debate in the last few months because although it was created as a civilian police body, López Obrador has promoted its transformation into a military entity, with the consequent criticism from social and human rights organizations that highlight the need for police functions to be strictly civilian and not military to avoid abuses. The modification is still pending judicial appeals.
