On March 17th, Manuel Mondrag\u00f3n y Kalb resigned as the head of the National Security Commission (CNS). There are several speculations regarding this event, which range from disagreements within the security cabinet, controversy regarding the future launch of the National Gendarmerie (to be completed by June, as announced by Mondrag\u00f3n) as well as the weariness (that could be better described as political rather than physical) of the former Chief Police of Mexico City. Regardless of hypothesis\u2013 some of which are closer to reality than others – and conspiracy theories, the truth is that Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s task had a finite and short temporality: to serve as an operator for transition in the dismantling of an institution as large as the Secretariat of Federal Public Security (SSPF).<\/p>\n
The context under which Mondrag\u00f3n headed CNS was quite complex. As one of his first decisions in office, Pe\u00f1a Nieto eliminated SSPF and delegated most of its functions to the Secretariat of the Interior (SEGOB), just like it occurred before PAN came to power. The aforementioned institutional readjustment faced two main problems. Firstly, under Felipe Calder\u00f3n\u2019s administration, SSPF was sort of like a \u201cprimordial Secretariat\u201d, and its head, Gerardo Garc\u00eda Luna, seemed to acquire a sort of \u201cessential\u201d status for the operability of Mexican security policy. As a matter of fact, the possibility of keeping him in the job was considered. Secondly, the modification had to provide short-term results, not necessarily related with substance but with form: police raids without scandals (the violent events that took place on the current President\u2019s inauguration day are not a proper example of the aforementioned but it could be argued that the administration had just begun), more effectiveness when handling information (insecurity has not decreased, it has merely disappeared from headlines), as well as putting aside the security issue as the\u00a0 current government\u2019s \u201ctipping point\u201d of media acts.<\/p>\n
His successful record of handling violence when in charge of the left-wing\u2019s largest stronghold \u2013 Mexico City \u2013 were Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s credentials as an ideal candidate for CNS, taking into account criteria such as operational effectiveness as well as political inclusion. One should only remember his confirmation as the head of the aforementioned institution by the Senate passed without any problems whatsoever (115 votes in favor and 2 abstentions). However, when taking a closer look, the image of a \u201cchampion against insecurity\u201d should be not universally accepted mainly because the \u201cpeace\u201d that the country\u2019s capital endured during his tenure as head of the city\u2019s police, paled in comparison to the disaster that was reigning all over the rest of Mexico. Regarding the political inclusion, Mondrag\u00f3n does not represent left-wing, not by a long shot (a similar occurrence happened with his former colleague in security and justice procurement issues at the administration of Marcelo Ebrard, Miguel \u00c1ngel Mancera). But just since an image is worth more than a thousand analyses, appointing Mondrag\u00f3n was the politically correct thing to do at the time.<\/p>\n
The fundamental question after Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s departure is whether there is a process of building security institutions. If the security strategy is still dependent on the personality of a public officer, institutionalism will only be a rhetorical concept. Individuals should operate institutions rather than become the institutions themselves. In that sense, the appointment of Monte Alejandro Rubido Garc\u00eda \u2013 an intelligence and security officer, former head of the Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Security (SESNSP) that is not keen on being in the spotlight \u2013 to replace Mondrag\u00f3n, opens the possibility of making an institutional progress in CNS as well as the public security\u2019s apparatus. The question is whether that is his actual duty or he was simply the right person at the right time.<\/p>\n
CIDAC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On March 17th, Manuel Mondrag\u00f3n y Kalb resigned as the head of the
\nNational Security Commission (CNS). There are several speculations
\nregarding this event, which range from disagreements within the security
\n cabinet, controversy regarding the future launch of the National
\nGendarmerie (to be completed by June, as announced by Mondrag\u00f3n) as well
\n as the weariness (that could be better described as political rather
\nthan physical) of the former Chief Police of Mexico City. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-3528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-political-analysis","tag-political-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3528"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4230,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3528\/revisions\/4230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}