Mexico's Sword of Damocles: Institutionalized Securitization and the War on Drugs - David Lier
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Seguridad Internacional
Mexico’s Sword of Damocles:
Institutionalized Securitization and the War on Drugs
David Lier
AI 006/2012
09 de abril de 2012
Resumen
Este trabajo presenta la teoría de securitización planteada por la
Escuela de Copenhague y la aplica a la guerra contra el narcotráfico en
México durante la presidencia de Felipe Calderón: ¿El narcotráfico y/o
los carteles del crimen organizado han sido securitizados? ¿Cuáles son
los objetos de referencia de la securitización? ¿Quiénes efectúan
maniobras securitizantes y a qué audiencia se dirigen? ¿Qué forma vino
cobrando la securitización durante la presidencia de Felipe Calderón? El
trabajo responde estas preguntas a través de un análisis diacrónico de
“actos de habla - (speech acts)” relevantes desde la asunción de la
presidencia por parte de Calderón hasta la actualidad. En los hallazgos,
dos puntos se ponen de manifiesto: En primer lugar, el caso mexicano
exhibe una securitización “institucionalizada”, la cual es lograda vía el
uso recurrente de maniobras securitizantes por parte del gobierno.
Segundo, la agenda de seguridad fue ampliada gradualmente durante
los años mediante una rearticulación de las amenazas y una
especificación de los objetos referentes, también por parte del
gobierno. El autor concluye que la institucionalización de maniobras
securitizantes conlleva el peligro de que el gobierno tome medidas
extraordinarias de forma descontrolada, lo cual implica correr el riesgo
de perder legitimidad política.
2Mexico’s Sword of Damocles:
Institutionalized Securitization and the
War on Drugs
David Lier1
Introduction
In its Conflict Barometer of 2010 the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict
Research HIIK for the first time classified the ongoing armed conflict in Mexico as an
“intrastate war”, raising its level of conflict intensity from 4 to 5. This arguably makes it the
first war in the Americas since 2003, which saw the last instance of Colombia being classified
on level 5 (HIIK 2008: 42-5):
“The Mexican war on drugs and the violence between the drug cartels claimed
the lives of at least 10000 people in 2010. In addition, clashes, especially between
security forces and drug gang members, rose dramatically in comparison to past
years, adding up to several hundred incidents all over the country.”2
The conflict in Mexico had first appeared on the HIIK’s Conflict Barometer in 2007
following the initial deployment of 7000 troops in December 2006 by Mexico’s newly elected
president Felipe Calderón to combat drug-related violence, which had been a problem in
Mexico for various decades. The number of troops deployed by Calderón increased to 30.000
by the end of 2007 (HIIK 2007: 39). Ever since this official militarization of the conflict, violence
in Mexico has escalated with 2011 probably seeing a new peak in numbers of victims, while
the drug cartels influence remains unabated or is spreading to previously undisputed areas. So
far, president Calderón’s failure to curb violence and prevent mounting death tolls has given
rise to wide policy debates on how to deal with the problem (Hernández 2011).
Apart from the domestic woes, there is a regional as well as an international element that
make the Mexican conundrum especially pertinent on today’s global security agenda: First, as
1
David Lier es diplomado en Periodismo & Comunicación de la Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas de Zúrich.
Actualmente cursa la Maestría en Estudios Internacionales de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella en Buenos Aires.
2
The HIIK defines war as follows: “A war is a violent conflict in which violent force is used with a certain continuity in
an organized and systematic way. The conflict parties exercise extensive measures, depending on the situation. The
extent of destruction is massive and of long duration” (HIIK 2007: 2).
3Mexico’s next-door neighbor, the US constitute the primary market for drugs produced and/or
trafficked trough Mexico. At the same time, the majority of arms used in the conflict have their
origin across the border in the US. Since the US Administration is challenged to combat illegal
immigration and drug/arms trafficking, while preventing a spill-over of violence into national
territory, the US-Mexican border region has become increasingly sensitive and
intergovernmental relations strained (Weinberg 2008: 23). Second, within the global war on
drugs spearheaded by the US and backed by the UN conventions of 1961 and 1988, Mexico
has, alongside other regions such as South East and Central Asia, become a focal point of
global drug policy debate and enforcement (Kushlick 2011: 2-4).
Since president Felipe Calderón’s strategy of militarization has so far only made matters
worse in terms of deaths and violence, the case of Mexico lends itself particularly well to a call
for a widening of the security agenda, or, at least, for a genuine debate on the potential
benefits of moving the debate away from an orthodox military understanding of security. To
this purpose, securitization theory by the so-called Copenhagen School might serve as a
valuable tool to unravel some of the most common assumptions in the debate on the conflict.
In the following section of this paper I shall therefore lay out the main tenets of
securitization theory in a first general step. With regard to the armed conflict in Mexico I shall
then proceed to single out the theory’s most valuable contributions and apply them to some in
the course of a discourse and speech act analysis. Herein I will limit myself to the domestic
level of the conflict and leave implications that touch upon the aforementioned regional and
global elements aside for the purpose of this analysis.
Theoretical framework: securitization and the Copenhagen School
I will now proceed to characterize the main tenets of securitization theory. To this end, I
will mainly draw on the Copenhagen School representatives Barry Buzan, Ole Weaver and Jaap
de Wilde and their 1998 work “Security: A New Framework for Analysis”. In order to enrich my
approach, I will add to their theory the findings of two case studies by Alan Collins and Paul
Roe, from 2005 and 2008, respectively.
Securitization is a theory that aims at a widening of the security agenda from its
traditional military and state-centric sector to other sectors such as the political, the economic,
the societal and the environmental (Buzan et al. 1998: 21-23). It is possible to identify five
interrelated main themes in their theory, which I will lay out accordingly. Discussing each one
4of these themes one after another, I will first give a detailed account of its theoretical
elements in general to subsequently specify which elements make the theory particularly
useful to analyze the case of the war on drugs in Mexico.
Spectrum and process. Politicization and securitization are processes that move public
issues across a spectrum from the non-politicized to the politicized and, conversely, from the
politicized to the securitized (Buzan et al. 1998: 23). Securitization is thereby “a more extreme
version of politicization”, which, in contrast to politicization, carries the inherent meaning that
“the issue is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying
actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure” (1998: 24).
In the first place, it follows from this that it must be possible to locate drug violence and
drug trafficking as public issues in Mexico on some part of this spectrum and that it is possible
for them to be moved from one side to the other. The first step in the analysis of the case will
therefore be to judge on what part of the spectrum these issues are located in Mexico, i.e.
whether they are politicized or securitized and what it would need for them to be moved.
Actor, audience and referent object. In the process of securitization an actor securitizes a
referent object by attributing an existential threat to the object in question, thereby requiring
that extraordinary measures be taken to remove the threat (Buzan et al. 1998: 21). The ability
of the actor to execute a successful securitizing move is determined by his position and the
legitimacy he is attributed: “Security is thus very much a structured field in which some actors
are placed in positions of power by virtue of being generally accepted voices of security, by
having the power to define security” (1998: 31). It is important to note here, that in defining
the securitizing actor “methodological collectivism” is indicated, i.e. the possibility to see the
actor as a “designated authoritative representative” for a collectivity of individuals (1998: 41).
In the case of the Mexican president Felipe Calderón, for example, it means not to define the
actor as Calderón the person, but rather the state Mexico materialized as Calderón.
The securitizing actor directs his action, his “securitizing move” towards an audience
(Buzan et al 1998: 25). The audience and its relationship with the actor play a crucial role in
defining the extent of legitimacy an actor has in order to engage in a securitizing move, and
determines in turn whether it leads to a successful securitization. First, the audience decides
whether or not to accept the referent object being represented as existentially threatened by
the securitizing actor: “If no signs of such acceptance exists, we can talk only of a securitizing
move, not of an object actually being securitized” (1998: 25). Second, in the case of having
5accepted the object as being existentially threatened, the audience decides whether or not
extraordinary measures are to be taken against that threat.
Paul Roe highlights this point in his case study by adding that “the role of audiences also
serves to reveal securitization as a distinct two-stage process: the ‘stage of identification’,
where an issue is defined as ‘security’, and the ‘stage of mobilization’, where the responses to
that issue are thereafter established” (Roe 2008: 620). While for the Copenhagen School
successful securitization not necessarily requires extraordinary measures to be taken, but is
rather already given by the acceptance of an issue as an existential threat (Buzan et al. 1998:
27), Roe goes on that “although the ‘stage of identification’ is a fundamental part of the
securitization process, the success or failure of security policy rests firmly in the ‘stage of
mobilization’” (Roe 2008: 633).
Buzan et al. define referent objects as “things that are seen to be existentially threatened
and that have a legitimate claim to survival” (1998: 36). Although these things can theoretically
be anything, successful securitization seems to be facilitated by certain types of referent
objects with the most common being the state or the nation: “In practice, the middle scale of
limited collectivities has proved most amenable to securitization as durable referent objects.
(…) Security is an area of competing actors, but it is a biased one in which the state is still
generally privileged as the actor historically endowed with security tasks and most adequately
structured for the purpose” (1998: 37).
In the case of Mexico things seem quite clear cut: The fact that president Calderón
militarized the conflict gives a first indication that extraordinary measures have already been
taken against the threat of drug violence, i.e. that securitization has made its way to Roe’s
‘stage of mobilization’ (2008: 620). The government can thus be seen as a securitizing actor
speaking on behalf of the state as a collectivity. As an elected president Calderón constitutes a
“designated authoritative representative” (Buzan et al. 1998: 41). Therefore, at first glance
Mexico seems to be a classic case of a securitizing move coming from a government with its
privileged power position and legitimacy in the military realm. In the analysis however, it
remains to be defined how securitization was carried out and which audiences were targeted
by the securitizing actor.
Forms. According to Buzan et al. securitization can either be institutionalized or ad hoc
(1998: 27). When securitization is institutionalized a recurring use of a securitizing move by an
actor has so well established urgency and a security argument that it is subsequently taken for
6granted. Since in an a democracy the process of securitization must be legitimized in the public
sphere, the occurrence of “black security boxes”, i.e. security practices that are not legitimized
in public, hint at an earlier legitimization that became institutionalized through the repetitive
execution of the corresponding security move resulting in a “package legitimization” (1998:
28). In this way, institutionalized securitization can be said to be the constant maintenance of
an issue beyond the politicized in the securitized spectrum, i.e. “above politics” (1998: 23).
Traditionally this form of securitization is most common in the military sector with its
entrenched bureaucratic routines: “The prominence of institutionalized military security
underpins not only the claim of those who want to confine security studies to the military
sector but also the de facto primacy of the state in security affairs” (1998: 28).
With regard to the situation in Mexico we can hypothetically assume the following: First,
the deployment of the military in Mexico to curb drug-related violence may hint at an incipient
institutionalization of securitization, where certain security policies in the future may go
unnoticed by the public as a result of package legitimization. Second, it is an indicator for the
traditional stance the government under Felipe Calderón has taken towards the problem of
drug-related violence and drug trafficking in Mexico, which seems to be confined by and large
to the concept of military security. And third, it is possible that President Calderón, given the
small margin by which he was elected in 2006, uses securitization as a means to ensure
support and strengthen his hold on power (Michaud 2011: 7-9).
Constructivist essence. Buzan et al. argue that securitization, like politicization, has to be
understood as an essentially intersubjective process: “Whether an issue is a security issue is
not something individuals decide alone. Securitization is intersubjective and socially
constructed” (1998: 31). This emphasizes their point that a successful securitization is not
decided by the securitizing actor but by the audience towards which the securitizing move is
directed.
In his case study examining the UK’s decision to invade Iraq, Paul Roe goes into the
complex relationship between actor and audience, in which the social process of securitization
takes places, at quite some length: Apart from establishing the aforementioned distinction
between a “stage of identification” and a “stage of mobilization” (2008: 620), he further
distinguishes “moral support”, i.e. the audience’s acceptance of an issue being presented as a
security issue, from “formal support”, which means the approval of relevant institutions to
take extraordinary measures (2008: 616, 620, 632). Roe therefore draws the following
conclusion: “In terms of securitization, this suggests that actors may sometimes need to
7rearticulate threats in such a way that, over and above the audience’s acceptance of the
danger, proposed policy responses also achieve the required level of agreement” (2008: 622).
This point seems particularly relevant in the Mexican case since President Felipe Calderón
and his government are liable to the Mexican public, which is why it can be assumed that they
are sensitive towards the opinion of the general public and hence might be required to
rearticulate threats in order to ensure agreement.
Speech acts. Securitization is based on speech acts, whose successful execution according
to Buzan et al. is determined by internal and external conditions, i.e. the legitimacy and/or the
position of the securitizing actor, its inherent grammar of security appealing to an existential
threat and societal, which may or may not be facilitating (1998: 32-33). The speech act as such
“is not interesting as a sign referring to something more real; it is the utterance itself that is
the act. By saying the words, something is done” (1998: 26).
In a 2005 case study examining securitization in the Malayan educational system, Alan
Collins looks at a facilitating condition for a speech act by highlighting the Copenhagen
School’s concept of security, which provides an alternative referent for security by placing the
emphasis on society rather than the state. He argues that “because identity is the cornerstone
of a society, it follows that societal insecurity occurs when the society perceives a threat exists
to its identity” (2005: 569).
Collins holds that “the extent to which a threat can emerge depends upon a society’s
degree of vulnerability” (2005: 569), so that this vulnerability of society comes to be an
external condition that facilitates the success of a speech act that seeks to represent a public
issue as an issue of societal security. Collins argues that “the deportation and killing of
members of the society” constitutes such a threat (2005: 569). In Mexico the victims of the
war on drugs are not only criminals and government troops, but also a high number of civilians
that suffer murder, extortion and kidnapping (Kellner, Pipitone 2010: 33-36). Therefore, it
might be worthwhile to examine if the status quo of Mexican society may be a facilitating
condition for successful securitizing moves.
De-securitization. Securitization does not imply a qualitative meaning, but is meant to be
a phenomenological category (Buzan et al. 1998: 39, 41). This makes its counterpart “de-
securitization”, i.e. the moving of a referent object from the securitized to the politicized or
non-politicized end of the spectrum (Collins 2005: 573), equally important to be considered,
8since securitization can lead to abuses of power by moving an issue out of the public, political
process. As Buzan et al. put it: “Our belief, therefore, is not ‘the more security the better’.
Basically, security should be seen as negative, as a failure to deal with issues as normal
politics” (1998: 29).
All-out war on drug cartels: Felipe Calderón’s security policy 2006 – 2011
In the following section I will apply the theoretical framework laid out above to the case
of Mexico and its government’s attempt to curb drug-related violence on national territory.
For reasons of precision, illustration and due to the limitation in length of this paper I will focus
solely on the administration of current Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who took office in
December 2006 and whose six-year term will expire in 2012. Regional elements of the conflict,
i.e. primarily the implications on Mexican-US relations and repercussions on other neighboring
countries, as well as international implications, i.e. the way Calderón’s war on drugs is framed
and discussed internationally and what constitutes its wider global context shall be left aside
for this purpose. My main aim here is to establish a clear-cut analysis, which is why a limited
temporal and spatial scope of the object of analysis is indicated.
The militarization and the fundamental change of the conflict towards a confrontational
strategy against Mexican drug cartels is directly associated with Calderón’s time in office.
Calderón’s decision to deploy the military has led to the aforementioned classification of the
conflict as a war by the HIIK. Moreover, it is during Calderón’s term that discussion has arisen
over whether to term the drug cartel’s increasingly violent actions as “narcoterrorism” (Celaya
Pacheco 2009: 1023-1025).
In this section I will consider three main events that lend itself particularly well to the
analysis of securitization. First, Calderón’s decision to deploy 7000 troops in order to curb drug
violence shortly after taking office in December 2006, amounting to the so-called Operation
Michoacán. Secondly, the implementation of the Acuerdo Nacional por la Seguridad, Justicia y
Legalidad ANSJL in August of 2008, which contains widely criticized measures designed to raise
the government’s efficiency in combating the drug cartels (Celaya Pacheco 2009: 1039). And
thirdly, Calderón’s address to the nation in June 2010, in which he lays out and justifies the
government’s security strategy.
After Calderón’s victory in the presidential elections of 2006 the President decided within
weeks to deploy the army to his home town of Michoacán on the country’s Pacific coast. In a
9speech delivered on the occasion of the transference of security personnel on the 13 of
December 2006 he engages in the following discourse:
“Pienso también en las familias de los soldados y los marinos de México, pienso
en las familias de los mexicanos y veo, precisamente, en el crecimiento de la
delincuencia y la criminalidad una amenaza para el país, una amenaza a la
seguridad pública, sí. Pero hoy les digo que debemos evitar a toda costa que esta
amenaza a la seguridad pública se convierta en una amenaza a la seguridad
nacional, en la medida en que desafía al Estado mexicano. Esta es la misión que
hoy les encomiendo, enfrentar este grave reto de la seguridad pública con toda la
fuerza del Estado” (PRM 2006, my emphasis).
We can observe here how President Felipe Calderón as a securitizing actor engages in a
securitizing move by means of a speech act. It is possible to identify the “country”, the
“Mexican state“ as well as “public” and “national security” as referent objects, which are
presented as being existentially threatened by “delinquency” and “criminality”. Calderón uses
the word “threat” four times in this short excerpt of his speech and links it with the mentioned
referent objects in a direct and grammatically coherent way. A call to take extraordinary
measures can be argued to be implicit in the diffuse allusion “with all the power of the state”.
Calderón as a securitizing actor benefits from conditions that facilitate the speech act: “A
general rule of thumb is that if a securitizing actor has been elected to represent a community,
as long as the security move is in their remit, then the actor has legitimacy” (Collins 2005: 571).
For Calderón, this is clearly the case, which is why he can be seen, in other words, as a
“designated authoritative representative” (Buzan et al 1998: 41) of the Mexican nation as
such. The official note on which the speech is uttered lends Calderón’s power position
additional weight.
With reference to Operation Michoacán, he goes on the reiterate several of the speech
acts described above, specifying the threat as “drug trafficking” and further subdividing the
referent objects into more singular units such as “state of the republic” and “security of the
Michoacans”:
“Con este operativo estamos ya proporcionando apoyo a las autoridades estatales
para combatir el narcotráfico y la delincuencia y, sobre todo, para recuperar la
seguridad de los michoacanos. (…) Para el Gobierno Federal queda claro: no
podemos permitir que ningún estado de la República sea rehén del narcotráfico,
10del crimen organizado o de la delincuencia común. (…) Utilizaremos toda la
fuerza del Estado para devolver a nuestra sociedad la paz y la tranquilidad que
demanda” (PRM 2006, my emphasis).
It can be argued that this reiteration of securitizing moves, even in one single speech,
constitutes the inherent mechanism of “institutionalized securitization” that leads the way to
“package legitimization” and the potential occurrence of “black security boxes” (Buzan et al.
1998: 28). As Paul Roe notes: “Most visibly in the military sector, persistent or recurrent
threats are often institutionalized, with states having built up standing bureaucracies,
procedures and military establishment to deal with those threats. The military sector of
security often carries with it a certain degree of legitimacy in terms of the government’s ability
to act without the consent of the general public. This is particularly so in the case of
preemptive strike” (Roe 2008: 618). One can argue that Calderón’s phrase “avoid at all cost
that this threat to public security becomes a threat to national security” in connection with
Operation Michoacán might allow the audience to interpret the deployment of troops as a
preemptive strike.
As far as audience is concerned, in his speech Calderón directly addresses the Governor of
the State of Mexico, state secretaries as well as the personnel of the Armed Forces. In short,
he is addressing the institutional and military elite of the state. While the wider public is not
directly targeted, one could at best argue that it is a secondary audience since the speech is
publically available in the Press Room section of the website of the Presidency and might be
divulgated by various news outlets across the country. Nevertheless, as Paul Roe notes, a case
can be made for a limited audience: “In instances of institutionalized securitization, however,
the role of audience is at best marginalized and at worst excluded” (Roe 2008: 618).
Discussing the theoretical framework of securitization we have seen that the audience
plays a crucial role in accepting an issue as being existentially threatened and legitimizing the
use of extraordinary measures to tackle the threat, i.e. enabling the stages of “identification”
and “mobilization” in the securitizing process (Roe 2008: 620). In this particular speech act, the
latter stage is redundant, since troops had already been deployed at the time of speaking. One
can still, however, try to gauge the extent of “moral” and “formal” support (Roe 2008: 616).
11One possible way to do this are opinion polls3: In August 2006, four months prior to
Calderón taking office and his deploying the military, insecurity came on top of the list of
perceived problems with 22.7 % of Mexicans stating that it is the main problem the country
has to deal with. Moreover, in February 2007, three months after taking office and deploying
troops, Felipe Calderón’s government achieved an approval rating of 57.8%. This data,
however limited, at least indicates that the Mexican public as an audience identified with
Calderón’s representation of referent object and threat and in general approved of his
governance in his first months in office, thereby lending him “moral” support.
About two years later, in August 2008, President Calderón goes on to implement reforms
and new measures to curb drug-related violence by the approval of the National Agreement
for Security, Justice and Legality (Acuerdo Nacional por la Seguridad, Justicia y Legalidad,
ANSJL), a “75-point plan that seals executive, legislative and judicial branches’ as well as
federal and state authorities’ to commitment to guarantee security in Mexico” (Celaya
Pacheco 2009: 1038). Among the measures is a 40-percent budget increase for the law
enforcement and security-intelligence sector as well as a new national police that will join over
45.000 military soldiers in policing Mexican drug cartels and other criminal organizations.
Important to note is that under the reform “a criminal organization suspect may be detained
for up to 80 days before charges are brought forth”, and that “civil rights advocates have
criticized the measure as excessive” (Celaya Pacheco 2009: 2039). Alan Collins notes that “if
the actor is the government an extraordinary measure can include the imposition of martial
law” and concludes that “measures to suppress rioters or terrorists might include the use of
legislation that enables their detention without trial” (Collins 2005: 571). A close reading of the
agreement text allows us to distill a variety of speech acts that can be argued to constitute
securitizing moves:
“Que el crimen organizado y la delincuencia común representan la principal
amenaza a la seguridad de los mexicanos, quebrantando y transgrediendo sus
derechos y libertades. (…) Al hacerlo, reconocemos que la sociedad mexicana se
encuentra profundamente agraviada por la impunidad, la corrupción, la falta de
coordinación entre las autoridades, así como por un ambiente de inseguridad y
violencia. (…) El Estado y la sociedad enfrentan una situación crítica debido tanto
a la delincuencia común, que agravia cotidianamente a las familias, como al
3
All data is from a survey carried out by the Mexican consulting firm Consulta Mitofsky in August 2011. (Consulta
Mitofsky 2011).
12embate del crimen organizado (…) La delincuencia ha dañado el tejido social y ha
encontrado cobijo en familias y comunidades enteras. (…) El desafío es
indiscutible e inaplazable. Es necesario poner alto al crimen y a la inseguridad
que se han incrementado a lo largo de los años y minan el desarrollo de las
personas y el progreso de nuestra nación” (HCD 2008, my emphasis).
While the securitizing moves performed by President Calderón two years ago are
reiterated, it is interesting to note that the set of referent objects is expanded so as to include
primarily “Mexican society”, the “social fabric”, “families”, “communities” and the
“development of persons”, thereby shifting the notion of security towards a societal
understanding of the concept. In the course of the analysis it is especially striking that now the
“challenge” is presented as “not to be discussed” and “not to be postponed”, which hints at
the solid placement of the issue at the securitized end of the spectrum: the issue is thereby
lifted “above politics”, since an essential quality of the political process in a democracy is the
openness to public discussion of issues. In a similar vein, this speech act implies a renewed call
for extraordinary measures and may also be an indicator for an advanced institutionalization
of securitization, which establishes the threat to be taken for granted. We can find another
speech act further down in the agreement text that is even more revealing of the solid
placement of the issue on the securitized end of the spectrum:
“La política de seguridad es una política de Estado. (…) Esa causa debe estar por
encima de diferencias políticas, ideológicas o sociales, porque una verdadera
solución requiere la suma de todos los esfuerzos. Todos los actores deben ser
capaces de subordinar sus intereses particulares a la necesidad urgente de la
Nación por recuperar las condiciones de seguridad” (HCD 2008, my emphasis).
The issue is represented to be held “above” political differences and the audience
advised to “subordinate” their personal interests to the “urgent necessity” of the
“nation”. These speech acts, quite literally, constitute a lifting of the issue above politics,
in that it employs vertical imagery to highlight this point. Therefore one can argue that
the tendency towards institutionalized securitization and a rigid positioning of the issue
at the securitized end of the spectrum is given.
Because the speech act in question is not a speech in itself, but an agreement, the
question of who constitutes the audience poses itself differently. However, due to the
divulgation of the agreement’s text in mass media it can again be held that the general public
13is at least among the target audience. The polls for the period of implementation of the
agreement look as follows: The perception of insecurity comes now only second on a list of
perceived problems with 16.6% of Mexicans stating it is the main problem the country has to
deal with, while approval ratings for Calderón’s government raise to 60.9% in November 2008
and to a record high 66.4% in February 2009, half a year into the implementation of ANSJL.
Thus the data suggests that in general, even though the economic crisis of 2008 may have
eclipsed insecurity as the main problem, “moral support” for the measures taken by the
government remains given. Formally, it is important to note that the agreement, being signed
by a wide array of entities from the political, economic, social and religious spheres of society,
in itself constitutes a strong vote of “formal support” for all the reforms and measures it
stipulates, including the aforementioned preemptive detention of suspects for up to 80 days
without the need of charges brought forth.
Another two years later, on the 15th of June 2010, President Calderón addresses the
nation in a televised speech in order to explain his security policy and the advances in the war
on drugs:
“Sé que México enfrenta un gran problema de seguridad. Éste es un cáncer que
se ha venido incubando durante años y al que no se le dio la debida atención (…)
Desde mi primer día como Presidente, la seguridad ha sido la más alta prioridad
de mi Gobierno. (…) Era urgente actuar con firmeza para defender la vida, la
integridad, el patrimonio y la familia de los mexicanos. (…) De no hacerlo,
dejaríamos a la sociedad en manos de nuestro enemigo común, que es el crimen,
y en particular el crimen organizado. (…) La razón de esta lucha eres tú y tu
familia” (PRM 2010, my emphasis).
More than four years after taking office and after delivering his speech on occasion
of initial militarization of the conflict, one can still identify the same securitizing moves.
The referent object is still “Mexico” threatened by “a big security problem”, “crime” and
“organized crime”. As noted in my comments to the ANSJL text of 2008, there has
apparently been a shift of security discourse towards the societal sector, since Calderón
increasingly securitizes “life”, “integrity” and the “families” of the Mexican people. He
even goes a step further and, addressing the viewer or listener, directly securitizes
him/her as well as his/her family. One might argue that this represents a rearticulation
of the security rhetoric that aims at ensuring the “moral support” of the audience, since
the set of referent objects has moved from comprising predominantly the state, the
14nation and public security through the incorporation of the society and the communities
towards full-blown and direct securitization of the individual itself. Also, Calderón’s use
of the expression “our common enemy” is particularly striking, since Alan Collins asserts
that “the consequence of securitizing the issue is that it generates an ‘other’ that is
posing the threat; it creates friends (us) and enemies (them)” (Collins 2005: 571).
Given the form of the speech act as a State of the Nation Address, the audience here is
clearly the nation itself, i.e. the population of Mexico and the formal institutions that make up
the government. The percentage of Mexicans who say that they perceive insecurity to be and
the nation’s most pressing problem in August 2010 has risen to 24.7%, which is higher than in
the election year 2006 and 8.2 percentage point up from the polls in 2008. Interestingly,
approval ratings are at an all time low at 55.2% for the same month. Although this indicates an
ongoing “moral support” of President Calderón’s government by the Mexican people, together
with the perceived threat of insecurity on the rise, there is a tendency for this support to
crumble. A year later, in August 2011, the most recent poll has confirmed this tendency:
Insecurity as the main perceived problem has seen a sharp increase and is now set at 37.3%,
constituting an increase of 12.6 percentage points compared to 2010, while Calderón’s
approval ratings, after having momentarily dipped to just under 50%, are now located around
the tipping point of 50.3%.
Conclusion
Taking into account the analysis of these three speech acts we can summarize the findings
in the following two points: (1) Throughout Felipe Calderón’s term in office securitization
seems to have become institutionalized over time through the constant repetition of core
securitizing moves by the government. (2) Notwithstanding, there seems to be a tentative but
gradual widening of the security agenda by a re-articulation of threats and a specification of
referent objects on the part of the government. At first sight, these two dynamics are
seemingly contradictory, but I argue that in effect they coherently reveal an inner tension in
the government’s security discourse as a consequence of opposed forces seeking to move the
issue on the spectrum.
(1) Institutionalized securitization and its vices: Power abuse and Frankenstein’s
monster. In his 2005 case study, Alan Collins argues that securitization can hold certain
dangers: “An audience, by enabling an actor to take emergency measures, thus grants the
actor extraordinary powers and, as labeling an issue as a ‘security issue’ creates an enemy,
15there may be few checks imposed on the implementation of those measures” (Collins 2005:
571). Since the government as an actor may have lifted the issue above politics, it may be hard
for the audience thereafter to influence future actions undertaken by the actor. In order to
illustrate the case, Collins uses a metaphor by Grayson, namely “Frankenstein’s monster”.
(2005: 571). He notes that “it not only captures the loosening of constraints on the elite that
allows them to act almost with impunity, but also visualizes just how powerful the securitizing
actor can become” and concludes that “once securitization is achieved the elite frees itself
from the regime’s checks and balances and can use emergency measures for its own self-
serving purposes” (Collins 2005: 585).
By looking at Paul Roe’s 2008 case study, we can argue that what Collins outlines is, in
other words, institutionalized securitization: In the conclusion to his study, Roe argues that “in
instances of institutionalized securitization (…) as audience the general public is for the most
part excluded from the securitizing process” (Roe 2008: 632). Just as Collins does, Roe puts an
emphasis on cases where governments and other political elites are the securitizing actors,
since they “are already imbued with the necessary amount of legitimacy to speak security”,
and because “the general public accepts that, in many cases, they have been elected, among
other things, to voice such concerns on their behalf” (2008: 632). In summary, it is those
mechanisms that lead to the “package legitimization” and “black security boxes” (Buzan et al.
1998: 28).
In the analysis of speech acts conducted above, we can see that some of the
characteristics of these mechanisms are given in the Mexican case: An issue has been
securitized, an enemy created. The securitizing actor is the government with its traditional
power position and heightened legitimacy. Moreover, as we have seen in the first of the three
analyzed speech acts, it can be argued that a partial exclusion of the wider public might occur
in some instances of securitization in the military sector. Also, it is argued that President Felipe
Calderón has indeed used securitization to self-serving purposes, i.e. to solidify his weak hold
on power because of the extremely thin margin by which he had won the presidential
elections in 2006 (Michaud 2011: 7-9). But most importantly, it is the complaints coming from
the alternative sector of civil and human rights, claiming the government has taken overly
draconian measures and accusing its troops of committing human rights violations in the
course of the escalating conflict (Malkin 2011). All in all, it seems that Collins reservations
about the securitization of public issues seem to hold some truth in the Mexican case.
16(2) De-securitization and its virtues: Rearticulations in actor-audience relationship. In
his 2008 case study of actor-audience relationship in the context of the UK government’s
decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein in 2003, Paul Roe highlights the “role that
‘audience’ plays in the decision on the part of states to mobilize and deploy armed forces”
(Roe 2008: 616), basing this on the fact that securitization is a process that is established
intersubjectively (Buzan et al. 1998: 31). Herein Roe distinguishes between “moral” and
“formal” support that can be given the actor by the audience: Apart from the “formal” support
of the institution sanctioning the use of force, waging war also requires moral support from
the general public and the relevant institutional bodies (Roe 2008: 620). Collins, for his part,
acknowledges this and links it with the inherent danger of power abuse: “Thus ultimately an
audience’s approval is required to legitimize securitization because without their approval the
use of emergency measures is likely to be perceived as an abuse of power” (Collins 2005: 578).
This is where desecuritization, i.e. resolving a “security issue” by moving it back from the
securitized to the politicized, attains its high importance since it can be seen as a mechanism
to prevent or restrict a possible abuse of power, which is likely to occur if an issue remains at
the securitized end of the spectrum.
Since the actor-audience relationship is the pitch where legitimization or perceived
abuses of power are determined, one can argue that it is the audience who can engage in de-
securitizing moves in order to bring an issue back into the political process. If the government
is the securitizing actor it should generally know that an abuse of power in the course of the
application of extraordinary measures will in the long run undermine its legitimacy, which
makes it sensitive to audience reaction. This is why Roe adds that “actors may sometimes need
to rearticulate threats in such a way that, over and above the audience’s acceptance of danger,
proposed policy responses also achieve the required level of agreement” (Roe 2008: 622).
This brings us to the Mexican case: In the analysis we have seen that President Calderón
has so far received “moral” as well as “formal” support from relevant institutions as well as the
general public. Through the public opinion polls, however, we have seen that “moral” support
by a wider public can be wavering according to their perception of the measures taken. Also,
we have noted a shift of securitizing moves from the military sector towards the societal
sector, which amounts to a “rearticulation of the threat” and which may indicate a response
on the part of the government towards rather disagreeing sectors of the audience.
17In Mexico we currently see various audiences engaging in de-securitizing moves: human
rights groups and civil rights activists do no longer agree with the security policy pursued by
the government (Malkin 2011). With death-tolls still on the rise and violence spreading, it can
be argued that current public opinion on the war on drugs is reaching a tipping point. Thus, it
remains to be seen now if it is possible for any alternative actor to successfully execute a de-
securitizing move and bring Mexico’s “war on drugs” back into the political arena of debate
and discussion.
Final remarks
This analysis did not take into consideration the regional and global implications of the
armed conflict in Mexico. These questions, however, could be addressed in further studies,
above all concerning the different securitizing actors that would be brought into play, such as
the U.S. government or the United Nations, which in turn would present different referent
objects as existentially threatened (national security or humanity as a whole, for example).
Furthermore, it would be highly interesting to look into actor-audience relationships in the
process of securitization at greater length, especially as methods of measurement of
legitimacy and audience agreement are concerned. Another path of investigation could lead to
an exploration of securitization within academics: Examine speech acts by actors who wish to
confine security to the traditional military sector, i.e. who take a securitizing approach to this
sector and to the security agenda.4
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Inc.
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4
In its conclusion, the academic work authored by Fernando Celaya Pacheco contains securitizing moves with
Mexico as a nation-state and as a democracy for a referent object. (Celaya Pacheco 2009). The author could
therefore be considered a securitizing actor. However, since the work has been elaborated at the Department of
War Studies of King’s College, this might seem logical.
18HIIK (2010), Conflict Barometer 2010. Crises, War, Coups d’État, Negotiations, Mediations, Peace
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