AMLO security moves could backfire in many ways

Elected in 2018 promising “hugs, not bullets,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel “AMLO” López Obrador came into office with a pledge to end the country’s long, expensive, and ineffective war on drugs. 

However, well into the second half of his term, AMLO appeared to openly turn his back on his pacifist agenda and this month proposed a popular consultation to determine the period in which the Mexican Army would remain in charge of the country’s public security issues, saying he is personally in favor of extending the Armed Forces’ mandate until 2028.

Less than a U-turn, this push for militarization formalizes AMLO’s continuance of the militarized approach used by his predecessors. 

The move has brought about an unexpected side effect, nixing a proposed broad opposition front and bringing the Mexican political landscape into disarray.

In 2020, the country’s three biggest opposition parties announced a surprising alliance with the goal of wresting power away from AMLO’s National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party.

The catch-all Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico uninterrupted for 71 years during the 20th century, got into bed with the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and right-wing National Action Party (PAN).

While always fragile on ideological terms, the alliance was “temporarily suspended” after the announcement of AMLO’s public security consultation. This is because the measure had been conceived by the PRI.

Opposition falls apart

The so-called Va por Mexico coalition was originally created to push back against the Morena party in the June 2021 midterms. While the vote did confirm the dominance...