Morena's Supreme Court nominees sweep
June 3, 2025
About 13% of voters participated in Sunday’s judicial elections in Mexico - that’s the lowest turnout rate in any federal election over the past 20 years, a rocky start for the reform that was aimed at democratizing Mexico’s courts, reports the New York Times. (See yesterday’s post.)
The low turnout partially responds to opposition parties’ call to boycott the process they had consistently opposed, reports El País.
Though votes are still being counted, of the votes cast, a high percentage were blank or null, reflecting voter confusion and lack of information about candidates. The thousands of candidates running to fill 2,681 positions were complete unknowns to the vast majority of voters, and many were befuddled by the complexity of having to fill out more than six different ballots that required voters to check individual names. The final results will take nearly two weeks to be announced. (El País)
Of the 94 million votes cast for the nine Supreme Court justice spots (voters had to pick 5 women and 4 men), more than 21 million were left blank or otherwise nullified, reports Animal Político.
The majority of the new Supreme Court justices are apparently aligned with the ruling Morena party. As of this morning, “it appeared that every single judge on the new, nine-member Supreme Court had featured on lists of recommended candidates distributed to voters by the ruling party,” reports the Washington Post. “Almost all have ties to ruling party Morena through previous posts or party membership,” reports the Financial Times.
The Associated Press says the results shift “a once fairly balanced high court into the hands of the very party that overhauled the judicial system to elect judges for the first time.”
The most voted candidate was Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Indigenous lawyer from the southern state of Oaxaca. He is an attorney from the government’s National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, who once represented the Zapatista rebels who launched an uprising in 1994.
Three other apparent victors were previously Supreme Court justices, nominated by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Another is the head of the human rights prosecutor’s office in the national attorney general’s office and another is the former head of Mexico City’s Transparency Institute. (Animal Político)
More Mexico
“Violence in Mexico cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in 2024 despite the country becoming moderately more peaceful,” reports InSight Crime, based on a new study by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
Guatemala
A Guatemalan court ordered the arrests of Colombia’s attorney general, Luz Adriana Camargo, and a former Colombian defense minister, Iván Velásquez, who led a U.N. anti-corruption mission in Guatemala, the CICIG. Guatemalan prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, who himself has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries for allegedly interfering in corruption investigations, had requested that an appeals court issue the arrest orders, reports the Associated Press.
Chile
Momentum for significant permitting reform for mining and other sectors is gathering in Chile ahead of November’s presidential elections — President Gabriel “Boric’s proposed reform is an effort to meet critics halfway. If it passes, it could boost investment in mining, green hydrogen, and a variety of other sectors,” reports Americas Quarterly.
El Salvador
Nayib Bukele has an approval rating of 85%, according to a new La Prensa Gráfica poll — since coming to power in 2019, El Salvador’s president has maintained an approval rating above 80%, a unique achievement in the region, reports El País.
Honduras
“Authorities in Honduras are prosecuting a former general for taking bribes from drug traffickers using similar video evidence that implicated a relative of the sitting president who was never charged, underscoring the selective nature of such prosecutions,” reports InSight Crime.
Ecuador
Ecuador’s government issued a public apology to a group of plantation workers who were subjected to slave-like conditions according to a ruling issued last year by the country’s Constitutional Court - Associated Press.
Venezuela
Venezuela's government is increasing taxes and public service charges on the private sector to compensate for declining oil revenue after tighter U.S. sanctions, reports Reuters.
Argentina
Former president Cristina Fernández Kirchner said that she will stand as a candidate in the Buenos Aires Province elections in September, confirming a return to frontline politics in the midst of a leadership confrontation with former ally, Buenos Aires Province governor Axel Kicillof. (Buenos Aires Times)
“The discovery of a clandestine ammunition factory capable of producing and distributing thousands of homemade bullets exposes how the lack of traceability for firearms and ammunition in Argentina remains a key vulnerability exploited by criminal groups,” reports InSight Crime.
Peru
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte’s popularity has hit rock bottom: she’s at two percent, according to the latest Ipsos poll, down from 21 percent when she took office. "We might be talking about a world record of sustained presidential disapproval," Ipsos Peru president Alfredo Torres told AFP.
Archaeologists and environmentalists have expressed their outrage at a decision by Peru’s culture ministry to cut by nearly half the protected archaeological park around the Nazca Lines, reports the Guardian.
Regional
“Trump’s second term has left me and nearly everyone else in this field analyzing US politics when discussing Latin America,” writes James Bosworth in the Latin America Risk Report. Plus one to that.
Critter Corner
Entomologists say the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in regions supposedly protected from pesticides, like in Costa Rica, represent a turning point in history. - Guardian
“A social media post about a traveler searching for a “spray” to silence the coquíes has sparked a wave of outrage among Puerto Ricans, for whom the frog is a symbol of identity, but also of their resistance to a crisis of excess tourism and gentrification that is forcing the displacement of their people and the death of their wildlife.” - El País