Mexican Intelligence at a Crossroad

Abstract

Following Vicente Fox's presidential election victory in July 2000, movement toward reform of Mexico's intelligence community emerged as one of the issues the new administration intended to address. The appointment of Adolfo Aguilar Zinser as National Security Advisor heralded a change in Mexico's traditional national security policymaking mechanisms, product of the 71-year rule of the Revolutionary Institutional Party. An examination of the Center of Intelligence and National Security and its legal underpinnings, along with an assessment of other underlying problems afflicting the wider intelligence community in Mexico reveal the challenges and pitfalls that confronted early reform attempts by the Fox administration. With this backdrop in mind, an overview of two specific intelligence reform bills recently introduced by opposition parties in Congress reveal the priorities legislators had in mind for overhauling the state security apparatus. Nevertheless, the slow pace of reform leaves unanswered several national security and intelligence challenges facing the Mexican state as the country grapples with an unprecedented political transition.