Mexican judicial elections controversial
May 29, 2025
As Mexico heads into its first ever judicial elections on Sunday, in which voters will elect more than 2,600 judges and magistrates, including the Supreme Court, “the experiment is so ambitious, divisive and confusing that it is difficult to know how it will unfold: A single day of voting will enact the most far-reaching judicial overhaul ever by a large democracy,” explains the New York Times. (See Tuesday’s post.)
A key concern of legal experts is that the election will open up the judiciary to organized crime: “Criminal groups have already infiltrated local governments, security forces and sectors of the economy in large parts of Mexico,” reports the New York Times. (See Tuesday’s post.)
But President Claudia Sheinbaum and her predecesor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who championed the reform, say that by popularly electing judges, they can root out corruption in the judiciary and make it accountable to the public.
“Who is going to choose the judges on the court now? The Mexican people. That’s the big difference between what once was and what now is,” Sheinbaum said Monday as she called on Mexicans to vote. (Associated Press)
More Mexico
Eight Mexican soldiers have died after triggering an improvised explosive device in the state of Michoacán. Organized crime groups are increasingly using mines: border region between Michoacán and Jalisco is the site of a violent struggle between Mexico’s most powerful criminal group, the Jalisco New Generation cartel, and local groups that are resisting its incursion into their territory, reports the Guardian.
El Salvador
The Salvadoran government’s arrest of a leading human rights lawyer, Ruth López Alfaro, is part of a wave of repression being carried out by Nayib Bukele, who is emboldened by his tactical alliance with Donald Trump. “Trump and Bukele peddle a brand of punitive populism that offers security at the expense of democracy and human rights – a seductive promise for electorates anxious about public safety. But this false bargain serves as a pretext to expand their own power, exploit public office and diplomacy for personal gain, and institutionalize cruelty in public policy,” write Noah Bullock and Amrit Singh in the Guardian.
Colombia
Colombia’s Petro administration could withdraw its bid for a popular consultation on labor reform if the Senate advances with a bill on the matter, reports La Silla Vacía. President Gustavo Petro had threatened to call a referendum by decree after Congress scuttled his reform plan
Colombia’s labor unions began a 48-hour strike yesterday in support of a referendum proposed by Petro to let voters to decide whether to overhaul the country’s labor laws. (Associated Press)
Regional
Between 17 and 19 named storms are being predicted this year in the Caribbean, another destructive hurricane season after the region experiencied one of the deadliest last year, reports the Miami Herald.
A decades-long experiment examines how drought affects the Amazon rainforest: during the years of vegetation loss, the rainforest shifted from a carbon sink, that is, a storer of carbon dioxide, to a carbon emitter, before eventually stabilizing. (Associated Press)
Brazil
Rio de Janeiro’s Brazil Avenue was originally conceived as a patriotic statement about Brazil’s economic ascent, but 80 years later, the highway “has become an emblem of something else: the government’s inability to control urban violence,” reports the Guardian.
Venezuela
Venezuela’s elections were not free or fair, but James Bosworth calls out the low quality of the falsification: “They waited until the last minute, panicked, printed and reported inaccurate numbers to steal the election and then miscalculated their own seat formulas. There is at least one position where the government wanted to win, faked the vote count, and still lost, meaning they had to manipulate their own fake counting system even after fabricating the voting numbers.” (Latin America Risk Report)
Regional Relations
“Trump and Maduro each depend on crucial backing from hardliners, and neither leader wants to appear weak,” argues Michael Albertus in Americas Quarterly. “This limits their ability to find common ground, and makes it likely that the U.S.-Venezuela relationship will be a rocky one in the years to come as Trump attempts to compel Venezuela to take back tens of thousands of migrants, while Maduro seeks leverage—such as further ties with Russia and China—to achieving sanctions relief and oil deals.”
Migration
“As the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown — moving to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants by year’s end — American citizens are being caught in the dragnet. Their removal has raised alarm among judges and legal scholars, who accuse the government of violating due process rights, and it illustrates how many U.S. families have mixed immigration statuses,” reports the Washington Post.
U.S. Justice Department lawyers said yesterday that the Trump administration is taking steps to comply with a court order to facilitate the return of a man who had been deported to Mexico and was then sent to Guatemala, despite having told U.S. authorities that he had experienced violence in Mexico and was afraid to go back, reports the New York Times.
Peru
The soaring price of gold has led to battles between criminal gangs, illegal miners and established mining companies — featuring underground gunfights in the Andean region of Pataz, reports the Guardian.
Argentina
Hundreds of protesters dressed up as characters in The Eternaut to demonstrate against the Milei administrations cuts to public education and scientific research. Since December 2023, more than 4,100 scientists and researchers have been removed from public institutions, including state universities and government tech agencies, reports the Buenos Aires Times.
Argentina’s state-run channel Paka Paka will start airing ‘Tuttle Twins,’ a libertarian, anti-state U.S. cartoon that educates children on the evils of socialism, the benefits of cryptocurrency, and that growing up in a single-parent family increases the chances of living a life of crime - Buenos Aires Herald.
Argentina’s Justice Ministry announced that it will repurpose a part of the ESMA complex in Buenos Aires as an office for federal prosecutors. A clandestine detention center during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, the complex now houses museums and the branches of several human rights organizations, reports the Buenos Aires Herald.
The Juicio a las Juntas project is sharing day by day testimony from Argentina’s landmark human rights trial, 40 years ago. In this testimony former detainee Iris Avellaneda shares how she was tortured, alongside her 15-year-old son who was assassinated by the military.