But in Mexico it is the reverse.
According to government figures, the Mexican armed forces kill with overwhelming efficiency, stacked bodies at high speed.
Mexican authorities say their troops are better trained members of the posters they face. But experts who study the subject say the death toll of the Mexican military is unmatched and reveals something much darker.
Paul Chevigny, a retired professor at New York University and a pioneer of the study of lethality in different armed forces, said "there are summary executions".
A study on wars since the late seventies of the International Committee of the Red Cross found that in most scenarios combat between armed groups for each dead person there is an average of four wounded. Sometimes even more.
In Mexico the account is reversed: the Mexican army kills eight enemy for every one that hurts.
For elite force, the navy, the discrepancy is even more pronounced: according to its own data, killing 30 fighters for every one that hurts.
The figures emerge from the document "lethality index 2008-2014: Decrease the fighting, deadliness increases opacity" published in June 2015 by the Institute for Legal Research at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The work is based on a series of official statistics obtained through requests for access to public information.
The statistics, which the government stopped publishing in 2014, offer a unique image on paper that have assumed the Mexican armed forces in the war against organized crime. Over the past decade, as marine and Mexican soldiers have been sent to the front line, the human rights violations have soared.
Still, the armed forces remain untouchable, protected by a reluctance to impose itself on the only institution that can send to battle government. Very few have taken steps to investigate the thousands of allegations of torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions that have occurred since the then President Felipe Calderon declared war on drugs a decade ago.
Of the 4000 complaints of torture reviewed by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) since 2006, only 15 have ended with a conviction.
Juan E. Mendez, Special Rapporteur on torture of the UN, said that "torture is not only widespread, but is surrounded by impunity. If the government knows that it is common and no charges or those that go to trial are not going anywhere, blame the state "they are presented.
The Mexican military did not respond to interview requests. General Salvador Cienfuegos, secretary of defense, has exonerated the institution saying it is the only facing organized crime and also is winning the battle.
Tlatlaya a winery in the outskirts of Mexico City, where the army killed 22 people during a confrontation in June 2014. The Human Rights Commission of Mexico found that at least 15 of them had been executed and that soldiers they had altered the scene to give the impression that there was a confrontation. Credit Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press
"We are on the streets because society asks us," Cienfuegos told the newspaper Milenio this month.
The army has killed around 3,000 people between 2007 and 2012. During that period, 158 soldiers have died. Some believe that the death toll is pure pragmatism. In Mexico, where less than two percent of homicides end in conviction, the armed forces kill their enemies because you can not trust the judicial system.
The government has received waves of pressure on this issue. In March, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the behavior of Mexico on human rights, including extrajudicial executions; the Commission thus added to the previous UN report saying that torture is practiced widely.
Several weeks ago, it was a recording which turned VIRAL in which a soldier hits a woman while police agent puts a bag over his head to suffocate public. There was a request for a public apology by the armed forces, something never seen before.
Even in the case of the 43 missing students, the role of the Army and the protection that has been the subject of controversy and polarization. According to the report of the commission of foreign experts who investigated the case, the night of the disappearance were soldiers present. However, the Army did not agree to meet with the experts and the government is not demanded it.
The government says it is serious about human rights and approves laws to counter abuses, protect victims and allow the soldiers be tried in civilian courts. She claims a new human rights policy in the Army and notes that during the administration of the current president, complaints against the Army have decreased significantly.
"Every report on violations of human rights is disturbing," said the government. "But these isolated cases do not reflect the general state of human rights in the country".
Although allegations of torture against the armed forces have fallen since 2011 -date in which significantly reduced the deployment of troops in the country, the lethality of the meetings has not diminished according to data released in early 2014.
The unique relationship between the army and the government back more than 70 years, when the country emerged from a civil war. To maintain stability, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has reached an agreement with the armed forces: in exchange for an almost total autonomy, the army would not intervene in politics.
Unlike most Latin American countries, Mexico has never been a coup. And although the government often has not been generous with the budget devoted to defense he has always protected the army from outside scrutiny.
And that protection has proved vital since 2006, when the army took to the streets to fight the cartels and as a result increased violence. As reports reached record highs, the government chose to do nothing to limit the Army in its jurisdiction.
And for two years, the military stopped publishing figures dead. Without such data, according to experts, it is very difficult to know the actual level of violence that has reached the war against organized crime.
Navy personnel in a house on the outskirts of Acapulco, where four men were shot in May. The Mexican navy kills about 30 suspects for every one that hurts. Credit Enric Marti / Associated Press
Some episodes come to court, as a confrontation in Tlatlaya, near Mexico City, where the army killed 22 people in June 2014. The Army boasted that during combat only wounded a soldier.
The case became a scandal immediately. The National Commission on Human Rights found that at least 15 of the victims were executed and that the soldiers had altered the scene to make it appear that there was a fight.
Even so, the three soldiers who were accused for his responsibility in the events were acquitted by justice last week. The only soldier convicted for disobedience, and served his sentence.
Impunity exists despite increased ties with the US Army through exercises, training and sales material aimed at increasing professionalism and by extension, respect for the Mexican military to human rights.
Two years ago, the United States agreed to sell black hawk helicopters to Mexico in a deal that could be valued at more than billion over 25 years, which also brings the Mexican Army to US standards.
"Not only sold them helicopters," said Todd M. Rosenblum, who was a senior official in Mexico policies for the Pentagon. "We sold 15 years of close collaboration that we could not have otherwise."
The proximity has done little to soften the criticism in the US Congress.
"Not all the training world work if there are no people in charge who believe in the importance of transparency and accountability," said Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick J. Leahy.
For further concern of the government of Mexico, some cases of abuse have managed to reach international institutions.
On December 29, 2009, three people disappeared in the state of Chihuahua and never heard from them. After seeking legal recourse to state, federal and military level, the family took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2011.
Five years later, the commission submitted its confidential report, according to two people familiar with the case. If the commission finds the Army responsible for disappearances, as expected, the resolution would be binding.
There is another case before the International Criminal Court: A nonprofit group in Baja California collected more than 90 examples of what it considers torture by the Mexican Army from 2006 to 2013. The court has not yet responded to the request.
The record includes the case of Ramiro Lopez, who was arrested with three other people and tortured by the army in June 2009. The men were almost asphyxiated with plastic bags and given electric shocks on the genitals before being presented as kidnappers and they were sentenced for it.
But in 2015, after a rare UN investigation, it was decided that the men were not guilty. The government absolved but did not seek those responsible for this forced confession.
"They should not try to justify their work with confessions extracted under torture," Mayra, sister of Ramiro Lopez said. "But it does not seem that this will change soon."
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