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They can be seen everywhere. In airports, patrolling beaches and parks, in rural areas and city streets. Mexico's military is now the largest and most powerful it's ever been. During the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, over 100 different functions of civilian governments or civilian authorities were transferred to the armed forces. What we are having in Mexico is a strong process of militarization of the public life. The armed forces, they are playing a stronger role not only in matters related to security, but also in infrastructure, building trains, airports. The massive amounts of public funds going into these projects is wholly controlled by the armed forces. But as a new government takes over, citizens are wondering if these infrastructure works are coming at the expense of public safety. What we are having now is the worst rate of murders in our history. Widely known as AMLO, President Lopez Obrador’s tenure has seen record high homicides, something he has addressed in confusing terms. There is no more violence. There are more homicides. So why is the military building trains and airports? And what does that mean for the country's security? We are on the Maya train, a 900 mile railway that carves through the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico’s southeast. This is arguably Lopez Obrador's most ambitious infrastructure project. About a third of it is being built by the military. In fact, more than half of the Defense Ministry's budget for 2024 will be spent in building the train. Court orders, cost overruns and derailments have at times stopped construction altogether. There are also concerns about the project's environmental impact, and the construction's integrity. The Mexican military is composed of three key forces. The Army, the Navy, and the National Guard, founded by AMLO in 2019. The National Guard is a force that President Lopez Obrador created to replace the Federal Police, which he considered too corrupt to function. The gutting of the Federal Police was initially welcomed by some. When we set up the National Guard in 2019, we came to an agreement. The National Guard is a civil body, not a military one. But then in 2022, President Lopez Obrador moved it to the Defense Ministry, essentially making it a military institution. In 2023, the Mexican Supreme Court declared the move unconstitutional and said that it should be reversed. But in practice, the National Guard still responds to the Defense Ministry. By transferring them these new functions that belong to civilian authorities, we're actively violating the Constitution, and we're actively undermining the rule of law. Lopez Obrador views the military as the most trustworthy, least corrupt, and most efficient institution to carry out the large infrastructure works that he views as his legacy. Some data does reflect popular opinion of the military to be good. About 71% of Mexicans say they trust the army and the Navy. That's more than the government or the police. Lopez Obrador is kind of pragmatic leader. He don't like ‘no’ as an answer. And the soldier is being trained to answer ‘yes, sir’. That is the kind of answer he's looking for. But we are having something that we didn't have in the past. Now we have a business, military elite in Mexico. Since Lopez Obrador came to power in 2018, the combined budgets of the armed forces grew by 150%. Compared to the federal police that AMLO disbanded, the National Guard has almost triple the membership. Yet, it's detaining fewer people and seizing less drugs and weapons. We thought the National Guard will fight federal crimes, narco traffic, organized crime, kidnaping. The rates and effectivity of the National Guard is so low. We are talking about 50,000 disappearances during the Lopez Obrador administration. Considering the modern history in Mexico, those are the worst numbers. We used to have a kind of state relationship between the armed forces and the government. Now, what we are having is a political relationship, which is really dangerous for our democracy. The armed forces are, by definition, armed corporations that can use the legitimate violence of the state against any enemy that they define, and having them performing these many functions increases the risks of human rights violations, arbitrary detentions. President Lopez Obrador, in a very smart move to changed the constitution, to force the next president to actually keep on using the armed forces and the military on public security matters until 2028. And that's going to be very difficult to reverse. Mexico's next president will have to reckon with what Lopez Obrador created. A richer, mightier and larger military that's more deeply ingrained in private business and government than it's ever been.