As Roderic Ai Camp cogently notes, the military is the least studied of all Mexican institutions, and Mexico’s is the least studied military in all of Latin America. Camp blames this dearth of research on both extreme military sensitivity and the near impossibility of gaining access to any records or documents. Indeed, of all his many projects on Mexico, this was the only one Camp was specifically warned against undertaking.
Happily for readers, Camp persevered, and he has produced a unique and truly superb book. He begins by delineating nine theses around which he constructed the volume. Several are common to all Latin American armies, but several are unique to Mexico: “that an army of civilian origin defeated an established army, and that both Mexico’s political and military leadership after 1920 were products of a shared revolutionary experience” (p. 7); and that the Mexican Revolution brought together a coalition of classes conducive to the “dominance of ideology and politics over guns” (p. 8).
Also significant was that the Mexican leadership created a government party, and “the strength and persistence of this civil institution has been a critical variable in sustaining civilian supremacy” (p. 10). Among other uniquely Mexican factors: the civilian sector lavished the military with praise; and the military’s involvement in political leadership has been gradually reduced over time, while civilian leaders have remained outside strictly military internal affairs.
In support of his theses, Camp offers detailed analyses of the historical background of the Mexican military; its professionalism and values; the creation and development of military-civilian connections; the social, class, and geographic background of the officer corps; the structure of the military educational system; and the methods of achieving the rank of general.
Throughout the book, however, run two seemingly contradictory threads. On the one hand, Camp meticulously describes how the civilian elite, usually through the government party, has succeeded in “depoliticizing” the officer corps, or at least taking “professionalization” and “obedience to civil authority” to such a degree that Mexican officers would never intervene in domestic politics. On the other hand, beginning with the presidency of Miguel Alemán, the government has sought to use the military to maintain internal order and, in tandem with the civilian security forces, to enforce internal security as defined by Alemán and the official party. That practice has continued, even increased in such areas as drug enforcement, leading Camp to note that “civilian leadership has increased its dependence on the military for support, especially in internal political matters, as the legitimacy of the established political institutions, including the presidency itself, has declined” (p. 35).
The truth is, I have a foreboding sense of déjà vu, especially regarding the assertion that “they don’t intervene because they don’t intervene” (recalling Chile, 1970-73). Yes, the Mexican officer corps is subjected to “an extreme form of military discipline and authority” (p. 43), but so were the Chileans, the Peruvians, and the Brazilians. Indeed, Camp himself recognizes the risks of conflict “between their apolitical training and their increasingly political role”; when the government calls on the army to deal with civil disputes, “it encourages the view of a politicized army” (p. 49). Nevertheless, this is an exceptionally fine book, one that will provoke intellectual discussion and controversy as well as a large number of new, more narrowly focused studies on the subject.
