Indigenous lawyer Aguilar leads race to head Mexico's Supreme Court
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Indigenous rights defender Hugo Aguilar is leading in the race to head Mexico's highest court following the country's first popular election to appoint judges and magistrates, according to electoral authority data on Tuesday.
With 87% of votes counted from Sunday's election, Aguilar had some 4.94 million votes - 5.2% of the total. Lenia Batres, who is close to the ruling Morena party, was behind him at 4.69 million votes, or 4.9%.
President Claudia Sheinbaum celebrated Aguilar's lead in the vote count, saying the court had not had an Indigenous leader since Benito Juarez, a Zapotec Oaxacan who led the court during the mid-19th century before becoming Mexico's first Indigenous president.
"He is a very recognized lawyer, he has the credentials to join the court," she told a press conference. "This is the goal: equal access to justice for all Mexicans. How would this have happened under the previous process?"
Aguilar, a Mixtec lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca, is currently lead rights coordinator for the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), having been appointed in 2018 by former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
He studied constitutional law and has worked in various government offices as a coordinator and advisor for Indigenous rights, as well as land and agrarian affairs.
Voting on Sunday, for some 2,600 judges and magistrates, attracted an estimated 13% turnout. Critics denounced the process as too complex and said the vote could undermine the independence of the country's judicial system.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
21 minutes ago
California's Yurok Tribe gets back ancestral lands that were taken over 120 years ago
ON THE KLAMATH RIVER, Calif. -- As a youngster, Barry McCovey Jr. would sneak through metal gates and hide from security guards just to catch a steelhead trout in Blue Creek amid northwestern California redwoods. Since time immemorial, his ancestors from the Yurok Tribe had fished, hunted and gathered in this watershed flanked by coastal forests. But for more than 100 years, these lands were owned and managed by timber companies, severing the tribe's access to its homelands. When McCovey started working as a fisheries technician, the company would let him go there to do his job. 'Snorkeling Blue Creek ... I felt the significance of that place to myself and to our people, and I knew then that we had to do whatever we could to try and get that back,' McCovey said. After a 23-year effort and $56 million, that became reality. Roughly 73 square miles (189 square kilometers) of homelands have been returned to the Yurok, more than doubling the tribe's land holdings, according to a deal announced Thursday. Completion of the land-back conservation deal along the lower Klamath River — a partnership with Western Rivers Conservancy and other environmental groups — is being called the largest in California history. The Yurok Tribe had 90% of its territory taken during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, suffering massacres and disease from settlers. 'To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,' said McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a series of on how tribes and Indigenous communities are coping with and combating climate change. ___ Land Back is a global movement seeking the return of homelands to Indigenous people through ownership or co-stewardship. In the last decade, nearly 4,700 square miles (12,173 square kilometers) were returned to tribes in 15 states through a federal program. Organizations are aiding similar efforts. There's mounting recognition that Indigenous people's traditional knowledge is critical to addressing climate change. Studies found the healthiest, most biodiverse and resilient forests are on protected native lands where Indigenous people remained stewards. Beth Rose Middleton Manning, a University of California, Davis professor of Native American Studies, said Indigenous people's perspective — living in relation with the lands, waterways and wildlife — is becoming widely recognized, and is a stark contrast to Western views. 'Management of a forest to grow conifers for sale is very different from thinking about the ecosystem and the different plants and animals and people as part of it and how we all play a role," she said. The Yurok people will now manage these lands and waterways. The tribe's plans include reintroducing fire as a forest management tool, clearing lands for prairie restoration, removing invasive species and planting trees while providing work for some of the tribe's more than 5,000 members and helping restore salmon and wildlife. One fall morning in heavy fog, a motorboat roared down the turbid Klamath toward Blue Creek — the crown jewel of these lands — past towering redwoods, and cottonwoods, willows, alders. Suddenly, gray gave way to blue sky, where an osprey and bald eagle soared. Along a bank, a black bear scrambled over rocks. The place is home to imperiled marbled murrelets, northern spotted owls and Humboldt martens, as well as elk, deer and mountain lions. The Klamath River basin supports fish — steelhead, coho and Chinook salmon — that live in both fresh and saltwater. The Klamath was once the West Coast's third largest salmon-producing river and the life force of Indigenous people. But the state's salmon stock has plummeted so dramatically — in part from dams and diversions — that fishing was banned for the third consecutive year. 'We can't have commercial fishing because populations are so low,' said Tiana Williams-Claussen, director of the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department. 'Our people would use the revenue to feed their families; now there's less than one salmon per Yurok Tribe member." Experts say restoring Blue Creek complements the successful, decades-long fight by tribes to remove the Klamath dams — the largest dam removal in U.S. history. This watershed is a cold-water lifeline in the lower Klamath for spawning salmon and steelhead that stop to cool down before swimming upstream. That's key amid climate-infused droughts and warming waters. 'For the major river to have its most critical and cold-water tributary … just doing its job is critical to the entire ecosystem,' said Sue Doroff, co-founder and former president of Western Rivers Conservancy. For more than 100 years, these lands were owned and managed for industrial timber. Patchworks of 15 to 20 acres (6 to 8 hectares) at a time of redwoods and Douglas firs have been clear cut to produce and sell logs domestically, according to Galen Schuler, a vice president at Green Diamond Resource Company, the previous landowner. Schuler said the forests have been sustainably managed, with no more than 2% cut annually, and that old growth is spared. He said they are 'maybe on the third round' of clear cutting since the 1850s. But clear cutting creates sediment that winds up in streams, making them shallower, more prone to warming and worsening water quality, according to Josh Kling, conservation director for the conservancy. Sediment, including from roads, can also smother salmon eggs and kill small fish. Culverts, common on Western logging roads, have also been an issue here. Most "were undersized relative to what a fish needs for passage,' Kling said. Land management decisions for commercial timber have also created some dense forests of small trees, making them wildfire prone and water thirsty, according to Williams-Claussen. 'I know a lot of people would look at the forested hillsides around here and be like, 'It's beautiful, it's forested.' But see that old growth on the hill, like way up there?' asked Sarah Beesley, fisheries biologist for the Yurok Tribe, sitting on a rock in Blue Creek. 'There's like one or two of those." Fire bans, invasive plants and encroachment of unmanaged native species have contributed to loss of prairies, historically home to abundant elk and deer herds and where the Yurok gathered plants for cultural and medicinal uses. Western Rivers Conservancy bought and conveyed land to the tribe in phases. The $56 million for the conservation deal came from private capital, low interest loans, tax credits, public grants and carbon credit sales that will continue to support restoration. The tribe aims to restore historic prairies by removing invasive species and encroaching native vegetation. The prairies are important food sources for elk and the mardon skipper butterfly, said Kling from the conservancy. Trees removed from prairies will be used as logjams for creeks to create habitat for frogs, fish and turtles. The tribe will reintroduce fire to aid in prairie restoration and reestablish forest diversity and mature forests to help imperiled species bounce back. Members know its going to take decades of work for these lands and waterways to heal. 'And maybe all that's not going to be done in my lifetime,' said McCovey, the fisheries director. 'But that's fine, because I'm not doing doing this for myself.'
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Russia says it will respond to Ukrainian attacks as and when it sees fit
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia will respond to Ukraine's latest attacks as and when its military sees fit, the Kremlin said on Thursday, accusing Kyiv of state terrorism and confirming that President Vladimir Putin had told Donald Trump that Moscow was obliged to retaliate. Ukraine used drones to strike Russian heavy bomber planes at air bases in Siberia and the far north at the weekend, and Russia also accused it of blowing up rail bridges in the south of the country, killing seven people. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, at his daily briefing with reporters, highlighted comments made by Putin a day earlier about the railway attacks. "The president described the Kyiv regime as a terrorist regime, because it was the regime's leadership that consciously gave the order, the command, the order to blow up a passenger train. This is nothing other than terrorism at the state level. This is an important statement by the president," said Peskov. Russia has not yet provided evidence that Ukrainian leaders ordered the rail attacks, and Kyiv has not acknowledged responsibility. Ukrainian attacks inside Russia and Russian air strikes and advances on the battlefield have escalated the war that began in February 2022, damaging prospects for peace talks that the two sides resumed in Turkey last month. Peskov noted, however, that Putin had supported the view of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a meeting on Wednesday that working-level contacts with Ukraine should continue. Peskov said Putin and Trump did not discuss holding a face-to-face meeting when they spoke on Wednesday. He said there was a general understanding that such a meeting was necessary, but it had to be properly prepared. The two did not discuss the possible lifting of sanctions against Russia, Peskov said in reply to a question.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Putin is ready to help Trump on Iran nuclear negotiations, the Kremlin says
MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President Donald Trump that he was ready to use Russia's close partnership with Iran to help with negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme, the Kremlin said on Thursday. Trump said after a phone call with Putin on Wednesday that time was running out for Iran to make a decision on its nuclear programme and that he believed Putin agreed that the Islamic Republic should not have nuclear weapons. Putin, according to Trump, suggested that he participate in the discussions with Iran and that "he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion", though Iran was "slowwalking". "We have close partner relations with Tehran and, naturally, President Putin said that we are ready to use this level of partnership with Tehran in order to facilitate and contribute to the negotiations that are taking place to resolve the issue of the Iranian nuclear dossier," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. Asked when Putin could join the negotiations, Peskov said that dialogue with Tehran and Washington continued through various channels. "The president will be able to get involved when necessary," Peskov said. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that abandoning uranium enrichment was "100%" against the country's interests, rejecting a central U.S. demand in talks to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The U.S. proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Oman, which has mediated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. After five rounds of talks, several hard-to-bridge issues remain, including Iran's insistence on maintaining uranium enrichment on its soil and Tehran's refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium - possible raw material for nuclear bombs. Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, said nothing about halting the talks, but said the U.S. proposal "contradicts our nation's belief in self-reliance and the principle of 'We Can'".
