Mexico’s War Against Drug Cartels and the Erosion of Trust of its Armed Forces

• In Event: 106 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
  In Refereed Roundtable: A. Table 11. Latina/o Sociology

Abstract

On the basis of LAPOP public opinion data and official evidence of military human rights abuses documented by the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), I find that trust in Mexico’s armed forces eroded after a “war on drug cartels” was declared by President Felipe Calderón. Further, when compared to their counter-insurgency operations, the data suggest that the use of the armed forces in law enforcement in the first part of the 21st century damaged their image even more than their counter-insurgency operations had in the early 1980s through the 1990s. So, while being the most trusted institution in Mexico apart from the Catholic Church, some regions in that country have developed a distrust of the military because of its human rights violations. This, in turn, appears to have negatively affected the quality of Mexico’s new found democracy.

Author

• Dolores Trevizo, Occidental College