Understanding Support for the Mexican Military and Its Role in Combating Organized Crime

This article examines the role that the Mexican military has played in combating drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence. It highlights the security policies and utilization of the military during the Felipe Calderón and Peña Nieto administrations. While President Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized the militarization of the drug war, he created a national guard, which consist primarily of the military, and deployed them to strategic locations. The article then examines the public opinion data, which shows the high levels of trust in the military. It then turns to regression analysis based to analyze factors that may influence trust in the military. Ultimately, this article concludes that the military remains better trusted than other institutions, but the armed forces have been overutilized in recent decades for a litany of internal security issues.