Mexico’s Congress Considers Changing Security Law To Control Drug War Violence

by Mari Hayman for Latin America News Dispatch, April 27, 2011.

With the current session of Mexico’s Congress scheduled to expire Friday, members of Mexico’s House of Deputies have less than a week to deliberate over controversial changes to the country’s National Security Law that would give the President the power to deploy Mexico’s Armed Forces against broadly defined internal threats to Mexican national security.

The Mexican Senate has already approved the changes, but members of Mexico’s PRD, PT and Convergencia parties say that the 83-page initiative to change the law constitutes a threat to individual liberties and could create a state of exception in Mexico that would effectively put the country under military control.

The initiative, originally submitted by President Felipe Calderón to the Mexican Senate in April 2009, argues that the current National Security Law, established in 2005, fails to adequately define the role of the Armed Forces in regulating internal security, and says the proposed changes will help resolve ambiguity about the procedures for military intervention in Mexico’s internal affairs. (continue reading… )