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‘The military has been inserted into the economy’: how the army became ubiquitous in Mexican life

Under the former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s army acquired a stake in air and sea ports, customs and luxury hotels

A new package holiday promises to whisk tourists in the Yucatán Peninsula from plush hotels to Mayan ruins on a new airline and freshly-laid train tracks – an adventure brought to them entirely by the Mexican army, which now does luxury tourism when not fighting crime.

That an institution with a history of human rights violations must now learn the art of customer service is just the strangest aspect of a deeper trend, as Mexico’s military plays an ever-greater role in the country’s civil administration, with alarming implications for its democracy.