Enrique Peña Nieto dusts off an old manual for imposing order

In this section

THREE brotherhoods are struggling for control of Apatzingán, a dusty town in the south-western Mexican state of Michoacán. One is deadly: the Knights Templar drug gang. One espouses vigilantism: the armed “self-defence” militias who on February 8th helped drive the Templars out of their stronghold. The third is the most powerful: a young and preppy group of federal-government employees sent in by President Enrique Peña Nieto to retake control of Michoacán after tension between Knights Templars and vigilantes threatened to spin out of control.

Many of this third group served under Mr Peña when he was governor of the state of Mexico in 2005-11. They have known each other for years and banter like friends at a tennis club. Their insertion into Michoacán reflects a wider trend in Mexican politics: the resurrection of an old but effective style of presidential rule.

After 12 years of an increasingly chaotic decentralisation of power while Mr Peña’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was in opposition, the president is now seeking to restore the balance. In Michoacán he has imposed his authority in a way not seen since then President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sought to neutralise the indigenous Zapatista uprising in the southern state of Chiapas in 1994.

He has appointed a commissioner, 38-year-old Alfredo Castillo, who talks airily of the sovereignty of Michoacán and the autonomy of its PRI governor, but in practice calls the shots. The state’s attorney-general and head of public security have been replaced by subalterns of Mr Castillo from when he worked under Mr Peña in the state of Mexico. Most of the six deputy attorneys-general and some of the 200 federal law-enforcement officials drafted into police functions are Mr Castillo’s (and hence the president’s) men and women.

On February 4th Mr Peña took a leaf from Mr Salinas’s book by announcing a 45 billion peso ($3.4 billion) investment splurge in Michoacán. (It emerged only later, sotto voce, that almost half of this was already in the 2014 federal budget.) At the same time he created what may become a parallel government in the state, ordering all ministers to appoint a high-level representative to Michoacán.

Mr Peña once wrote a university thesis on the historical power of the Mexican presidency, or presidencialismo. He has neither the clout nor the notoriety of some of his PRI predecessors during the period of the party’s stranglehold. “He’s attempting to go back to a strong presidential regime under more democratic circumstances. Most Mexicans approve,” says Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister.

The federal intervention in Michoacán has so far been positive. But the inclination to assert control and throw money at a problem whenever protests flare is an old PRI habit that can be counterproductive. The implicit lesson for other states, Mr Castañeda says, is “Let’s get us some guns and dress up like vigilantes and we too can get some more money.” Another potential problem is what Ernesto López Portillo, a security specialist, calls “the paradox of intervention”. It could allow state governments to slacken their own efforts to create effective law-enforcement institutions.

Mr Castillo insists that his relations with the government of Michoacán involve “co-ordination…not subordination”. But Mr Peña’s attempts to impose discipline on regional governments go beyond Michoacán. Since he took office in 2012, states have been bypassed in the payment of teachers, had ceilings put on their debt capacity, and been urged to align their security plans with the interior ministry.

For most of the governors, who are from the PRI, this is a return to business as usual. Under the presidential system in the 20th century, they were accustomed to taking orders from the top. What is different now, says Sergio Aguayo of El Colegio de México, a university, is that as the state governments’ budgets and autonomy increased during Mexico’s democratic transition, so did the power of organised crime to undermine all authority.

In Michoacán this has forced Mr Peña’s men to make some unusual compromises. Federal troops and police retook Apatzingán with the help of militiamen, some of whom carried illegal assault weapons. As Mr Castillo discovered when he was filmed in talks with a vigilante once suspected of drug links, some may have shadowy backgrounds. He hopes that as they are gradually drafted into a new rural police force, the bad ones will be weeded out. For the time being, the violence-weary citizens of Michoacán appear prepared to give the new gang, and Mr Peña’s style of presidencialismo, the benefit of the doubt.