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Washington Post
3 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Mexico's ruling party headed toward control of newly elected Supreme Court, vote tallies show
MEXICO CITY — Mexico's ruling Morena party appeared to be heading toward control over the Supreme Court, preliminary vote tallies of the country's first judicial election indicated. While votes were still being counted for the majority of the 2,600 federal, state and local judge positions up for grabs in Sunday's judicial elections, results rolled in for the nine Supreme Court positions.
Miami Herald
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Mexico's judicial reform is now in the hands of confused voters
MEXICO CITY - It's an election unlike any other in Mexico. No sports stadiums packed with the party faithful. The smiling faces of normally omnipresent candidates almost completely absent on TV or glitzy posters. But the stakes couldn't be higher. On Sunday, Mexicans will begin electing judges from among thousands of largely unknown candidates in a vote critics slam as a radical experiment that will mark the end of an independent judiciary. But Mexico's popular President Claudia Sheinbaum, a staunch defender of the election, dismisses the naysayers. She argues the first-of-its-kind election will deepen democracy by transforming the country's courts with jurists trusted by ordinary Mexicans. She insists it will root out corruption and nepotism. The sheer complexity of the vote - featuring at least six color-coded ballots presenting each voter with around 200 hopefuls to consider - promises a more politicized federal judiciary. Skeptics fear it will tilt the courts toward Sheinbaum's populist Morena Party, or in some cases install judges beholden to powerful drug cartels. Companies fret it will make investments much riskier. Nationwide, there are more than 3,000 candidates competing for 881 positions. Last year, as it became clear Morena would enact the judicial overhaul, Mexican assets and the peso currency nosedived. The revamped system will see Mexico join Bolivia as the only other country in the Americas that elects its federal judges, including Supreme Court justices. In the U.S., only some state and local judges are chosen by voters. By law, the sea of candidates can't finance their campaigns with private or public funds, or buy television or radio spots. Parties are also banned from formally backing their favorites and candidates can't hold traditional rallies. Instead, they're limited to social media posts and paying out-of-pocket for travel. It's led to an extremely low-information election. "I didn't know there was an election and I don't know the candidates. I still don't know if I'll participate," said Rocio Catalina, a 64-year-old in Iztapalapa, Mexico City's most populous district. She described the looming election as "very complicated." In a normal election, her neighborhood would have been hit by a tidal wave of campaign posters and brochures doled out by party workers. Not this time. Still, many would-be judges have made the most of limited means to reach voters. Walk to a local market, and you might find a future Supreme Court justice with a megaphone touting her experience. Log on to X or TikTok, and you can watch other aspiring judges dancing in the street. Until recently, you could even find a candidate sweet-talking you on Tinder. Designed by Sheinbaum's party as a way to rid the courts of judges it accused of improperly blocking major initiatives, the imminent upheaval was muscled through Congress late last year thanks to the congressional super-majorities that were swept to power along with her. With just days to go before the election, voters say they have never heard of most of the 3,000-plus hopefuls. 'Justice Chicharrón' If politicians are trained in the art of winning over hearts, judges usually aren't. Campaign strategists offered package deals to promote the ambitions of aspiring judges. Discounts were available for those who accepted multitasking managers juggling a dozen campaigns at once. One candidate compares himself to a crunchy street snack resembling fried pork in a pun-filled video touting his qualifications, and was later dubbed "Justice Chicharrón" online. Another named herself "Dora the Transformer," after the Nickelodeon heroine but also a nod to the political project Sheinbaum inherited from her likeminded predecessor, who hailed his movement as Mexico's fourth historic transformation. Such campaign gimmicks have been embraced in a bid to stand out from the crowd in an election seen attracting only a small fraction of some 100 million eligible voters. José Manuel Urquijo, who heads the consultancy Sentido Común Latinoamérica expects at most a paltry 20% turnout but possibly as low as single-digits. He points to recent referendums that attracted similar participation while citing the lack of well-funded campaigns or voter mobilization efforts. By comparison, around 61% of voters turned out in last year's presidential election. In Mexico, unlike other countries in Latin America, voting is not mandatory. Urquijo, who was also hired to work on a Supreme Court campaign, stresses the novelty of lawyers forced to morph into politicians in short order. "They're unknown people going around and asking for your vote," he said. "And voters are saying, 'Who are you?'" On a recent Sunday, "Justice Chicharrón" Arístides Rodrigo Guerrero walked down a crowded row in the the Mexican capital's biggest fruit and vegetable market, handing out cartoon-decorated pamphlets. He's one of more than 60 registered Supreme Court candidates, and since voters might not remember his name, he had the number 48 emblazoned on his shirt. Using a foam board as a prop, he showed how ballots won't include the logos of any political parties, which in other elections appear next to candidate names. "This time around, you're going to vote by number. And I'm number 48 on the purple ballot," he said. He explained where to write his number and pitched ideas to modernize the courts with artificial intelligence while bringing justice closer to "those who have the least" by holding sessions outside stuffy court chambers. Overall, voters will elect nine Supreme Court justices, five members of the new judicial discipline court in charge of supervising the judiciary, two judges on the top court tasked with resolving election disputes, plus more than 800 other federal judges. Further complicating matters, 19 Mexican states - more than half - will also hold parallel elections for local judges, adding still more pages of ballots to sort through. A fresh start Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum's predecessor and longtime patron, proposed the election early last year as his six-year term was drawing to a close. His presidency was marked with constant clashes with judges, who he often derided as corrupt and out-of-touch. He was especially angered by Supreme Court rulings that sought to block some of his key priorities, including a push to fast-track the construction of a major tourist train as well as an electricity law that gave dispatch preferences to the state-owned utility. AMLO, as López Obrador is widely known, claimed he was the victim of fraud when he lost earlier presidential bids in 2006 and 2012, but the top electoral court denied his challenges. Its members will now be up for election. The constitutional reforms were enacted in September during AMLO'S final month in office, just as Sheinbaum was gearing up to take over. As the year came to a close, Mexico's peso currency had shed nearly a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar, its weakest performance since the 2008 financial crisis. Markets worried that more politicized courts would heap additional uncertainty onto Latin America's second-biggest economy. But to its supporters, electing all federal judges simply ensured a fresh start, with half to be voted in on Sunday, the other half in 2027. In general terms, the reform upended a merit-based system marked by exams and evaluations that allowed for a career path within the judiciary, dating back to an earlier reform enacted in the 1990s. The new elections-based system lowers experience and minimum age requirements. Many hopefuls on the ballot have little experience working inside the courts. In the past, the president nominated Supreme Court candidates who then needed a two-thirds Senate vote to be confirmed, a process that required negotiation but by definition was run by political elites. Earlier this month, Fabiana Estrada Tena, another Supreme Court contender, gathered a dozen potential voters in a professor's home, part of her efforts to sway voters. She had previously advised a pair of Supreme Court justices, but now she lamented what she described as rot within the system. "When we talk about the election being a change to democratize justice, it's real," she said. "The Supreme Court has failed the people of Mexico." She argued that the justices have failed to hold authorities accountable, pointing to mishandled cases of criminal negligence and abuse of power. The ballots voters will mark on Sunday also feature gender parity requirements, part of a longstanding push by Mexico's INE electoral authority to ensure equal numbers of men and women in elected office that has led to a dramatic surge of female representation across Mexican politics. 'I hope they deliver' But even the possibility of better representation and more accountability hasn't seemed to break through to most voters. According to poll published by El Financiero earlier this week, 52% say they are little or not at all aware of the election. The same survey also found that the top-ranked candidates include three sitting Supreme Court justices appointed by AMLO, Lenia Batres, Yasmín Esquivel and Loretta Ortiz. They have all signaled some support for Morena priorities. Other polling points to the desire for change. Impunity and corruption are considered the third most important problem in the country by about 27% of the people interviewed for LatAm Pulse, a survey conducted by AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News. Amrit Singh, executive director of the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School in California, speculates that the election could secure a strategic advantage for Morena if it can mobilize its voters. But it remains an open question to what degree political parties or unofficially affiliated unions will effectively amp up turnout machines. Morena's top senators have started a nationwide tour to get out the vote. In northern Nuevo León state, home to the industrial capital of Monterrey, the governor's Movimiento Ciudadano party has signaled its support for several Morena-backed Supreme Court hopefuls, according to a report last week by newspaper Reforma after one of its reporters infiltrated a training meeting for state bureaucrats. Sheinbaum has herself praised the trio of AMLO-nominated Supreme Court justices who are running to remain in their posts, citing their defense of positions her government has taken. Even the ambiguous pamphleteers who follow some candidates around resemble party activists who typically turn out for elections. Non-partisan efforts to juice turnout include a push by conglomerate FEMSA, which has announced it will give a free coffee to voters in its Oxxo corner convenience stores on Sunday. Some who do plan to vote, like Irma Garcia Paniagua, 63, a business owner in the capital, mostly want to see results once the new judges take office. "I hope they deliver what they promise," she said. "Because many times they promise the sun and the stars but when they get in, they completely forget who elected them." Sheinbaum has directed voters to an INE webpage featuring candidate biographies. But wading through all them takes hours. The president posted a how-to-vote video aiming to demystify the process. Roberto Omar Paredes, an aspirant to be a criminal court judge, acknowledges how cumbersome voting will be during an recent hours-long campaign swing on foot that eventually took him to a small restaurant where he touted his credentials to the manager. "I was the best student in my class," he boasted. "So if I kill someone could you help me?" the woman who runs the restaurant asked him with a wry smile. "No," he replied. "But I can help with drug trafficking problems." Both burst out laughing. ______ (With assistance from Kyle Kim.) Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Mexican governor says Trump revoked her tourist visa preventing her from traveling to the US
The governor of the Mexican state of Baja California announced on Sunday that she and her husband had their tourist visas for the U.S. revoked. Marina del Pilar Avila, a member of Mexico's Morena party, said she and her husband were informed that their visas had been revoked, but did not say why, or if she was given a reason for losing her visa. She attributed the revocation to actions taken by President Donald Trump. "I fully trust that the situation will be satisfactorily clarified for both of us," Avila wrote on X. Avila's visa is one of hundreds that the Trump administration has revoked as it continues to crack down on immigration to the U.S. Carlos Torres Torres, another member of the Morena party and Avila's husband, said in a Facebook post that his visa had also been revoked. He noted in his post that losing his visa "does not represent an accusation, investigation, or formal indictment by any authority, neither in Mexico nor in the United States." Torres further said that his "conscience is clear" regarding the matter. Avila also commented in defense of her husband. 'I say this with absolute clarity: Carlos has always acted with integrity, dedication, and a deep commitment to Baja California," she said, according to the New York Post. Torres serves as the special projects coordinator for the Baja California state government and the city of Tijuana. The San Ysidro border crossing in Baja California — the border between the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and the greater San Diego, California area — is the busiest border crossing on the planet. Baja California also has two other major border crossings further east in Otay Mesa and Tecate. Avila has been involved in immigration talks with the U.S. since Trump took office. Last week, she met with the U.S. Consul General in Tijuana, Christopher Teal, for talks. She isn't the first foreign official to have her visa revoked. Several weeks ago, Colombian President Gustavo Petro also had his visa revoked by the Trump administration. He lost his visa ahead of a visit with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Epoch Times
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Mexican Governor Says US Officials Revoked Her and Husband's Visas
The governor of the Mexican border state of Baja California said on Sunday that the U.S. visas of both her and her husband have been withdrawn. Carlos Torres, the husband of Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Avila — both of whom are in the ruling Morena party — 'It should be noted that my conscience is calm and I am sure that the situation will be resolved favorably,' he said in his post, adding that he has 'contacted an international immigration law specialist who is evaluating the submission of a motion to reopen or reconsider the decision.' A day later, Avila 'My husband Carlos has faced a situation, and as in every shared life, that circumstance has also reached me,' she wrote. 'Shortly after the consular measure was applied to him, I received a similar notification. I am sure and fully trust that the situation will be clarified satisfactorily for both of us.' Neither Torres nor Avila has publicly revealed why their visas were withdrawn, nor whether U.S. officials gave them a reason. Related Stories 5/10/2025 5/10/2025 Avila added on X, 'I say this with absolute clarity: Carlos has always acted with integrity, dedication, and a deep commitment to Baja California. My support for him isn't just personal, it's moral and political. Because I know who he is and because he has always stood up and taken responsibility for things that aren't his.' On Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters in a daily 'We are going to wait ... before issuing any communication,' said Sheinbaum, who also belongs to the Morena Party. Baja California, which borders California, has significant commercial ties between the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. The San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana is U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a May 2 'Whenever the government catches non-U.S. citizens breaking our laws, we will take action to revoke their [visa] status,' the post said. A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy told The Associated Press that visa records are confidential and cannot be publicly discussed. The Epoch Times has contacted the U.S. Embassy in Mexico for comment. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Another politician's visas revoked by Trump administration
By She did not provide any reason for the revocation in her X post, but Torres wrote on Facebook Saturday that it 'does not represent an accusation, investigation or formal incident by any authority, neither in Mexico nor in the United States.' Torres, who serves as the coordinator of special projects within the Baja California state administration and for the city of Tijuana, also claimed that the revocation is 'a measure that, as is with many people in similar contexts, responds to internal arrangements of the State Department.' 'Currently, the application of these administrative criteria has become increasingly common and like so many others, I am included in that universe,' Torres told his followers. In fact, their visa revocation comes just weeks after Colombian President Gustavo Petro claimed the Trump administration revoked his visa to attend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It also comes amid President Trump's war of words with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum (pictured right) for her refusal to deal with drug cartels in her country. Trump had pressured Sheinbaum last month to allow US soldiers into her country to help fight the drug gangs that produce and smuggle fentanyl into the United States, but she declined the offer, according to the Wall Street Journal. That prompted Trump to blast Sheinbaum, the leader of the Morena party - of which Pilar Avila and Torres are both members, as being 'afraid of the cartels.' Now, Torres says he has contacted an international immigration lawyer 'who is evaluating the submission of a motion to reopen or reconsider the decisions or begin the process for a new visa application, in strict adherence to official channels.' 'I make this information public with responsibility and transparency, not only to avoid speculation, but also to limit political opponents' misuse of this situation,' Torres wrote, adding: 'Believe me: these are people without limits or scruples, willing to turn any fact into slander if they think it will give them an advantage. Throughout my public life, I have acted out of respect for the law and [am] fully aware of the commitment I serve,' Torres concluded as he vowed that the situation 'will be handled with seriousness and confidence in legal procedures.' Pilar Avila also stood by her man in her post on X, saying he 'has always acted with integrity, dedication and a deep commitment to Baja California. 'My support for him isn't just personal, it's moral and political,' she wrote. 'Because I know who he is and because he has always stood up and taken responsibility for things that aren't his.' She also noted that 'this situation is taking place in a complex binational context that requires my composure and prudence.' Still, the Baja California governor said she has full confidence 'that the situation will be satisfactorily clarified for both of us.' The dramatic move to revoke her and her husband's visas comes just weeks after Pilar Avila took a trip to San Diego to promote tourism in Mexico, according to KUSI. It remains unclear what may have provoked the US State Department to suddenly revoke their visas. But the Trump administration has been cracking down on who can obtain visas in recent weeks. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent diplomats overseas a directive to scrutinize the social media content of any visa applicant in an effort to bar those suspected of criticizing the US or Israel from entering the country, according to the New York Times. His order specifically stated that applicants can be denied visas if their behavior or actions show they bear 'a hostile attitude toward US citizens or US culture (including government, institutions or founding principles).' Then on April 30, Rubio announced he was implementing a 'one-strike' policy for all temporary visa holders in a document marking Trump's first 100 days in office. He declared that 'a visa is a privilege, not a right,' and noted that under the Immigration and Nationality act, any noncitizen who 'endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization' is not welcome into the country. 'There is now a one-strike policy: Catch and Revoke,' Rubio wrote. 'Whenever the government catches non-US citizens breaking our laws, we will take action to revoke their status. The time of contemptuously taking advantage of our nation's generosity ends,' he concluded. Want more stories like this from the Daily Mail? Hit the follow button above for more of the news you need.
