The Dirección Federal de Seguridad ('Federal Security Directorate', DFS), known commonly as the "secret police", was the Mexican intelligence agency commanded by the Secretariat of Governance created in 1947 by the president Miguel Alemán Valdés, with the assistance of U.S. intelligence agencies (namely the CIA) as part of the Truman Doctrine of Soviet Containment during the Cold War, with the official duty of preserving the internal stability of Mexico against all forms of subversion and terrorist threats.Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Mexico) Security Reports, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin, Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Mexico) Security Reports, 1970–1977
The agency was used by the Mexican government to spy political opposition and commit human rights violations during what is called the Mexican Dirty War. It was dissolved in 1985 following the uncovering of its involvement in the torture and murder of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, succeeded by the General Directorate of Investigation and National Security (Dirección General de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional), which later was renamed as the National Security and Investigation Centre (Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, CISEN) in 1989. In 2018 it became the National Intelligence Centre (Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI).
Structure A big part of its actions were supervised or directly ordered by the CIA, as it had the same objective of stopping and dismantling insurgent, communist, socialist and student movements that threatened "against the stability of the country", all as part of the LITEMPO program, which had in its members high commanders of the DFS and the Mexican army, as well as several presidents of Mexico during the Cold War. With the direct correspondence of Winston Scott, the chief CIA station in Mexico, who served as proconsul in the Federal District.
The ranks were divided as the director, two sub-directorates and the general coordinator.
Offices Officially, the headquarters were located on Circular de Morelia 8, Colonia Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc, Ciudad de México, but they operated a significant portion of their operations in an extraofficial fashion on Avenicda de la República 20, Colonia Tabacalera, Cuauhtémoc, Ciudad de México, in front of the Monument to the Revolution.
On Avenida República 20 there was a secret entrance for the agents on Ignacio Ramírez street, which was constantly surveilled by agents and was only accessed through a password, while the main entrance was for the general public. The premises included a gym, full bathrooms, a café, an internal bank to do interest-free loans, a barbershop, a payment office, an internal grocery shop with prices lower than the public's, a library and academical courses to be educated in law, politics, research, redaction, intelligence and counterintelligence. It also included a shooting gallery so they could learn how to shoot and the theoretical aspect of ballistics and mechanics of the weapons used. They were trained to shoot pistols of caliber .45, 9mm, .38 Super, Israeli submachine guns like the Uzi 9mm, AR-15 rifles, shotguns, M1 Garands .30 and rifles caliber .35.
The building located on Circular de Morelia 8 functioned as an illegal detention centre used for temporary or permanent disappearances. The basement was used to tag and identify the detainees, and the upper ones to kidnap or torture them. It was only accessible by the main entrance being accompanied by a DFS agent or coerced verbally or physically by an authority. The place was as surveilled as the other one 24/7 and was impossible to take a picture of the building. Once the people were taken here, they were confronted with one of two possibilities: Being taken to Campo Militar Número 1 or another black-site, where they would disappear completely, or taken to the Procuraduría del Distrito Federal (the State's Prosecutors Office) to then be sent to Prison, Prisión de Lecumberri. It is unknown how many militants disappeared inside this building, of whose only bloody handprints rest on the walls. On 1978 it stopped being the HQ for the DFS.
Branches
Administrative Sub-directorate It was the responsible of the personnel, archive and internal affairs departments, as well as the general services of the directorate. It supervised the information processing and archival. This branch was in charge of the internship and order inside the DFS. Inside this branch they would be trained of the directorate's philosophy, law and methods. The archive held files since the creation of the office in 1947 and microfilm archival. General services managed and provided the services of an armory of 2.500 guns, vehicles, ambulance, criminalistics lab, two full buses for intel operations and two planes.
Federal Security Director This person the overseer of the Directorate through the Coordinator Committee, integrated by the heads of the 13 services and departments. It was in charge of supervising all investigations of the Internal Affairs Department and acted accordingly. Under him, rested the General Coordinator, who tethered the different departments so they could function at the biggest efficiency, directly under his command worked seven internal departments who helped coordinate the directorate's departments, surveil and secure the DFS' building, as well as one sub-department being tasked with researching crimes committed by government officials.
Operative Sub-directorate The biggest division of the entire agency. It was in charge of capturing political, economic and social intelligence of the Metropolitan Area and some other states, as well as managing all the agents deployed overt or undercover. It had 6 sub-departments: One for the processing of information and typing; another for direct surveillance of any subversive or opposittion group, mainly on Mexico City and the State of Mexico, but they were also in touch with every context of the country and even had a secret office in every airport; one specially devoted to the surveillance of each of the states, with 56 agents abroad, and a single office to report to for every one of the 32 states; the criminalistics lab; photography lab; law department; operations department, which coordinated every mission on all the states.
Brigada Blanca
The last of its sub-departments was the most important after its creation on 1976, La Brigada Blanca (the White Brigade) which was a paramilitary unit integrated by agents, policemen and soldiers dedicated specifically to eliminate the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre, a Marxist–Leninist coalition formed by syndicalists, unionists, farmers and students who were one of the most organized guerrilla groups of the epoch. Created after the LC23S made its own "Brigada Roja" (Red Brigade).For additional sources see the main article Brigada Blanca.
Audiovisual Information Services They were in charge of any screenings, elaboration of any audiovisual material captured by the Photography Department. They were also in charge of monitoring and processing all the media received from any other state and press, as well as the close-circuit camera system that was recorded in VHS tapes.
Clandestine Operations Department aka Special C-047 Also known as "Federal Services" or "Special Operations Group", was created in November 1965, by Miguel Nazar Haro after receiving counter-insurgence preparation by the CIA, and the events of the Cuartel de Madera Assault. With the official name "Special Investigations Group", codenamed C-047, in honor of the year the agency was created, this department was dedicated to spy the intellectual elites, social and intellectual leaders, and refugees from the Latin-American dictatorships that were being placed by the CIA at the time and were looking for political asylum in the country, every conflict presented by these population was referred to the Brigada Blanca or the Migration Department in the government. Supposedly the agency's best-trained team.
Everything made by this division was classified, being physically isolated inside the same building. It worked through two sections, the intelligence, specialized in collecting political, economic, social and military information about all the countries worldwide that were of national interest, because of Mexico's importance in the global stage; and the counterintelligence one, that used the intelligence's side data to look for social movements in the country that come from these groups of interest, using diverse methods for infiltration and surveillance to collect the adequate information. This department also oversaw the political refugees and general control of foreigners, as well as their actions and behaviours. This department was commanded by the Director of the DFS.
Among its operations, the following stand out: Thwarting the formation of an armed group by the Spaniard socialist journalist Victor Rico Galán; the surveillance of Julio Cortazar, Julio Scherer and Gabriel García Márquez; the torture and murder of Enrique Camarena; the murder of Manuel Buendía, monitoring the entrance and exit of tourists with destination or origin of Cuba; monitoring the activities of the palestinian refugees that went to Mexico after the Nakba and Six Day War; among others.
It also had four other sub-sections: The electronics, where bugging and secret photography were planned; the "lecar", specialized in encrypting and decrypting messages, including those in another languages; the propaganda and conterpropaganda, that analyzed and made efforts to make an inverse equivalent propaganda to the ones being made by subversive groups; the international issues, that relayed classified information coming from another countries.
Anthropometric Department A group of experts in politics, economics and sociology whose mission was to do predictions on events and the psychological and social context of the Mexican society, to catalogue its risk for the agency and act accordingly.
Political, economic and social studies Department Like the Anthropometric Department, it was a group of experts in the social sciences who were tasked with cataloging and analyzing the information captured and processed by the other departments.
Symbology The main emblem and identity of the DFS was around the tiger, the reason being:
It also had an official anthem, with the lyrics and melody composed by Miguel A. Galindo Rangel:
History On 1947, during the government of Miguel Alemán Valdés, and given the appearances of subversive groups around the country, as well as the influence by the United States through the Truman Doctrine to antagonize the sympathy towards the USSR and its allies, the DIPS disappeared and in its place the Dirección Federal de Seguridad was founded, with the general Marcelino Iñurreta de la Fuente on charge. Its initial functions were to take care of the wellness of the president and his family; according to one of the first audiovisual files of the agency, it stablishes its function as a "policing institution that, with the material and human elements it has, it must be one considered one of the best agencies of its type in the world". But with time it was flipped into doing political espionage, that consisted in suffocating the opposers to the regime and locate and detain its main leaders.
By the 1960s it had already consolidated itself as the agency that was designated to monitor all growing social and student movements of the epoch, with special interest on what happened inside the UNAM, infiltrating to consolidate the internal official narratives against the students.