Militarization in Mexico: understanding the military paradigm beyond expenditure

Sabina Morales Rosas and Carlos A. Pérez-Ricart will be participating in the 17th Annual International Conference on Economics and Security, which is co-organized by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Economists for Peace and Security, on 14–15 June 2013 .

Militarization in Mexico: understanding the military paradigm beyond expenditure

Abstract

 Although the SIPRI definition of Military Expenditure is sufficiently large to embody almost all actors involved in the chain of military expanding, Mexican security policy during the last twelve years challenges the validity of relying solely on military expenditure for monitoring the militarization process. In this paper we argue that for tracing militarization in this country, we urge to rely on broaden concepts that shed light into areas of the security policy that might not be formally part of the military at first sight and that should be taken for granted to estimate changes over time.

Based on national records our paper documents disparities between the numbers from SIPRI’s Database—coming from national public data—and information acquired by transparency laws form the Mexican government; this information is discussed in the light of two phenomena: 1) the imposition of military logic to the civil security corps (at both federal and local levels), meaning phenomena such like: the migration of ex militaries to civil police hierarchies; the transfer of military knowledge to civil police forces; and 2) the use of military technology and equipment for civil security provisions.  We argue that the study of the Mexican case may not be an exception but a trend in security policy in Latin America, especially for reforms addressed to organized crime combat; one that may contribute to the study—conceptualization and measurement—of militarization beyond military expenditure.