Rinse and repeat: Sheinbaum set to follow AMLO’s security policy

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum is inheriting a country plagued by rampant organised crime, where powerful cartels continue to act with near impunity. Some of her proposals look to address education and poverty – the roots of violent crime. However, the military's involvement in tackling cartel violence, despite questions around its efficacy, as well as deeply embedded corruption, will challenge her ability to effectively improve the security environment.

Sheinbaum’s plans to address violent crime

Sheinbaum has not yet released a specific security agenda but has indicated an approach in line with outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) focus on improving education access and addressing poverty to disincentivise youth recruitment to cartels. She has also proposed a 25 percent increase (from 120,000 to 150,000) in the number of troops in the National Guard, a hybrid civilian police and military force established under AMLO to fight cartels. Deviating from AMLO’s tendency to sideline the police force, she seeks introduce certain pillars that yielded some success in reducing the homicide rate in Mexico City during her tenure as mayor. These include increased spending and training for police, improvements to investigative and intelligence gathering capabilities, and facilitating greater coordination between the prosecutor’s office and state police.

Increased military involvement

Despite AMLO’s policy of ‘Abrazos, no balazos’ (hugs, not bullets), aimed at addressing socio-economic roots of violence, he has continued former governments’ strategy of leaning on the armed forces to combat cartels in affected areas. Although this has contributed to a modest 9.2 percent decline in homicide rates between 2019 and 2022, the strategy has seen gangs fragment and proliferate. This has driven regular violence amid clashes with security forces, and rivalries for resources and territory, with more than 185,000 people killed during AMLO’s tenure, a record for the most lethal violence during a presidential term.

Corruption to the core

Corruption across all levels of government and state institutions has further prevented efforts to effectively reduce cartels’ influence, activities and ability to act with impunity. From local, state, and senior politicians to policemen and judges, regular scandals continue to highlight the extent to which cartels have infiltrated these institutions. This has severely reduced anti-corruption efforts, facilitating cartels’ ability to conduct trafficking activities, stifle investigations, and ensure influence through financing political, judicial and security allies. The military itself has been subject to accusations of corruption and cartel collusion, including a scandal revealing the National Guard’s sale of weapons to cartels in 2021.

Although Sheinbaum is a proponent of AMLO’s controversial plan to reform the judiciary to root out corruption, it is unclear that this strategy will be effective, and without wider efforts to address embedded corruption in local government and police, cartels will continue to operate with little opposition.

More of the same

Although some of Sheinbaum’s policies aimed at improving socio-economic factors driving youths to cartels are promising, the continued prevalence of corruption, and an overreliance on military forces to combat cartels, will likely sustain a similar level of violence as under AMLO. Significant and sustainable improvements to the security environment will require reforms that not only tackle poverty and education to drive down cartel recruitment, but also enhance anti-corruption initiatives and improve local law enforcement capabilities. While Sheinbaum’s success in the election – with a majority in the house of representatives, the senate, and 26 of the 31 state legislatures – may provide the political capital necessary to affect some improvements, it is likely that implementing these policies will continue to face headwinds, as it has under the AMLO administration.