EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexico continues to expand the role of its National Guard, announcing the addition of two railroad security battalions and a mounted patrol unit.
One of the first tasks of the 3,200-strong railroad police will be to secure President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s signature Tren Maya tourism project in southern Mexico. The 182 members of the horse patrol are to “exert vigilance in priority rural zones and urban areas of difficult access to vehicles,” according to a draft submitted on Feb. 14 to Mexico’s Commission of Rule Changes.
The additions were first announced last year by Defense Minister Gen. Luis Crescencio Sandoval, who outlined growth plans for the new 4-year-old National Guard.
“New units are being created in the National Guard. What is being planned? A battalion with a presence at ports of entry, one for protecting national treasures, one for protection of tourism in Quintana Roo (Cancun, Cozumel, etc.) and one in Acapulco [….] Two battalions of railroad security and a mounted squadron,” Sandoval said. “What we created in 2022 plus ’23 equals 15,103 new (officers).”
The mounted unit will operate in national parks, dirt roads, farming communities and trails in yet-to-be-identified areas of Mexico. The horse patrol is also meant to reach forested areas where illegal logging occurs and support troops engaged in police operations in rural enclaves, according to the draft.
Illegal logging has been reported in Western Chihuahua and in Central Mexico. Cartel activity is also displacing residents by the hundreds in mountain towns and rural villages in Guerrero and Michoacan, where military vehicles struggle to get there before criminals flee the scene.
This graphic shows the expanding role of Mexico’s National Guard.
Opposition parties have criticized the expansion of the National Guard, which the president sold as a new, highly trained police force to combat organized crime but whose staff is 80% soldiers reassigned from the army to the guard.
Independent Sen. Emilio Alvarez Icaza last July said the Guard was illegally militarized and had committed human rights abuses.
Sen. Claudia Ruiz Massieu, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, said crime in Mexico continues to be rampant despite the Guard.
Speaking at a Senate forum last July, Ruiz said Mexico had just experienced its three most violent years in terms of homicides, peaking above 34,000 in 2020.
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