Pushing back on militarism in Mexico

"Demilitarize your idea of security, defense, stability and wellbeing." Digital illustration by @KarenconK.

Opinion • Ana Calderón & Constanza Carrasco • November 14, 2025 • Leer en castellano 

Over the past decades, Mexico has been undergoing a profound and accelerated process of militarization, understood as the transfer of functions and budgets from civilian institutions to the military.

At Intersecta—a feminist civil society organization based in Mexico City—we’ve devoted a great deal of work to examining the impact of militarization on human rights, and specifically on the rights of women. The lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the armed forces has made this a challenging task.

What began with deploying soldiers in the streets as a response to public security issues—the most visible aspect of this phenomenon—has expanded into a broader strategy. It now encompasses customs management, the construction of megaprojects such as the Mayan Train, border surveillance, textbook distribution, and the management of state-owned companies.

The expansion of institutional military power did not happen through a single channel or a unique group of actors. It is part of a process that transcends the six-year terms of the federal executive, one which has been driven by the executive, congress, secretaries of state, and state and local governments.

Militarization is more than just a strategy employed by civilian authorities. According to various surveys, the armed forces are among the institutions that enjoy the highest level of public trust in Mexico.

Government officials use this trust to justify their use of the armed forces. This is evidenced by the September 2024 approval of a constitutional reform that makes the national guard a military institution under military jurisdiction and subsumed to the Secretary of Defense (alongside the army and air force). The same reform also allowed for the permanent involvement of the armed forces in public security.

Violence & impunity

We’ve been requesting the annual reports on the use of force—which are required by the 2019 National Law on the Use of Force—for the past five years.

This law requires all security forces, including the armed forces (the Army, Air Force, Marines, and now the National Guard), to publish data on the impacts of their use of force, such as the number of arrests and killings, disaggregated by sex.

But the armed forces have argued that they are not required to produce these reports, as they do not consider themselves public security institutions. What that means is that we don't have the information we need to effectively assess the outcomes of their involvement in security tasks.

Even so, there is some data available that helps shed light on the negative effects of increased military presence in public spaces.

In 2020, Intersecta published a report showing how military confrontations aimed at countering insecurity at the municipal level were not associated with a decrease in homicides. On the contrary, they tended to lead to an increase in homicides of both men and women, at home and in public.

Last year, a report published by México Evalúa found similar patterns among state Public Security Secretariats led by former military officers.

Militarization of immigration policy is another area that touches women's rights, due to the National Guard's involvement in curbing the flow of migrants.

The military's participation in the Mayan Train, one of the government's flagship projects, has also had significant implications in the lives of women. The army has hired civilians to build the infrastructure project, many of whom come from local Indigenous communities.

According to testimonies collected by journalists, the workers hired by the army perform their duties under informal conditions. They have no contracts, social security, or labor protections, and are subject to long work days. Among women, there have been numerous reports of abuse and sexual violence.

Women in rural territories have pointed out that their lives are affected because these construction projects make it more difficult for them to go about their daily lives normally, and that forms of violence against them have increased.

"Patriarchy and militarism sustain each other. You can't condemn one without condemning the other." Digital illustration by @KarenconK.

Women and gender dissidents against militarization

At Intersecta, we’ve identified different people within government and civil society groups that are engaged in analyzing and resisting militarization. Women organizing around their concerns are an important part of this work.

Between May and October 2025, in partnership with Limpal Colombia, Intersecta carried out a project to promote the political participation and leadership of Latin American and Caribbean women.

One of the project's objectives was to explore the direct effects of military presence and understand how it impacts women in different territories. We also sought to identify strategies for resistance, and the understand the types of mobilizations that emerge from women's collectives and organizations in response to militarization.

For five weeks, we conducted focus groups and interviews with women and non-binary activists and leaders from different parts of México, including Puebla, Jalisco, Mexico City, Michoacán, Chiapas, Morelos, and Guerrero.

The participants who shared their experiences, analyses, reflections, and forms of resistance with us are part of different contexts and struggles. Their work ranges from working for the legalization of abortion to searching for the disappeared; academic collectives that seek to understand phenomena associated with violence and insecurity also participated.

An initial conclusion from these discussions was that participants tend to understand militarization in Mexico as a systematic strategy that reshapes power relations, territorial control, and the exercise of politics.

They pointed out that these transformations take various forms throughout the country, highlighting the importance of cultural differences and the history of political organization in each region.

It was noted that official discourse is often based on the following logic: insecurity is such a serious problem that it requires an equally or even more aggressive response, such as the use of the armed forces, to address it.

Any other solution is perceived as insufficient.

But the implementation of this strategy and the attempt to normalize the presence of the armed forces in the streets have led to a sense of even greater insecurity, which is connected to instances of abuse of force and human rights violations.

This is exacerbated among land defenders and activists in general. For them, what was presented as a solution ended up making insecurity even worse.

Obstacles and hopes

The women we spoke with pointed out various obstacles and increased risks in their activism and daily lives as a result of militarization.

Among other things, they noted that militarization has resulted in highly visible and marked repression of social activism and protests. Activists have been subject to surveillance, including the use of drones near community centers, which has created a climate of mistrust and has sent a message of deterrence to organizations.

They discussed the development of collective and self-sustaining strategies that prioritize care and agency that allow them to continue to organize. They also talked about adopting tools and designing security plans for different activities, including digital security.

Developing research skills was identified as particularly important, so as to understand major risks and communicate techniques for protection.

Creating women's networks and physical and digital training spaces like the School of Political Leadership and the School of Women in Governance in Guerrero are strategies that have proven to be effective in sustaining activism and have equipped women with administrative and governance skills that can be applied in different contexts.

The people and organizations we’ve engaged with over the past few months are focused on building social transformation processes that take into account the needs in each territory, while promoting dialogue and coordination among various social groups.

Their long-term political aspiration is to build pathways and alternatives in which the problems caused by violence and insecurity are a distant memory; futures in which their work is no longer necessary. Possible and achievable futures where people can live with dignity in any territory.

Despite challenges and exhaustion, their hope lies in the sustainability of collective networks and in their commitment to continue moving toward an understanding of what more livable territories, free of violence and militarization, would look like.