On a recent Thursday in Hermosillo, Sonora, 72-year-old Angelina Galindo López rested in a folding chair beside a cadre of large bubbling pots.
As she prepared for a full weekend of serving traditional Yaqui food to music festival goers, she looked ahead with excitement to the following weekend — the one where she’ll be part of history.
“For the first time we’re seeing these changes,” Galindo López said. This Sunday, she will vote in a first-of-its-kind judicial election in Mexico, ushered in by the ruling political party, which she supports.
For the first time, Mexicans will vote for more than 800 judicial branch positions. In 2027, Mexicans will head to the polls again to elect more judges. After that election, every judge in Mexico will have been elected democratically. The new model represents a radical change in the country’s judiciary that sets Mexico apart from virtually every other country in the world.
It’s one result of a series of reforms to the country’s constitution, orchestrated by the previous president and formalized under current Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum this fall.
Sheinbaum says turning over the power to select judges to the electorate will root out nepotism and favoritism in the judicial system and make the judicial branch more fair and accountable.
“Now, the people are going to decide,” Sheinbaum said last week. Her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former leader of the ruling political party, accused judges in his country of acting with impunity.
This weekend, Mexico will put his solution to the problems in the judicial branch, which he called during his presidency a “protector of mafias,” to the test. López Obrador regularly criticized judges who ruled against him while in office.
Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, agrees Mexico’s justice system has long had problems. The majority of criminal cases in the country don’t even make it before a judge. But analysts and legal scholars in Mexico and abroad fear putting the entire branch up for election could have consequences.
“It’s just a very radical reimagining of what a judiciary is,” Freeman said. “It’s bewildering to even try to understand one of these ballots.”
In the capital of Sonora, the Mexican state south of Arizona, more than 80 candidates will appear on voters’ multiple ballots on Sunday. Citizens can vote for a diverse list of positions, including family and civil court judges. The government body that runs elections expects, based on past elections, that turnout will most likely be under 20%.
A ban on campaign advertisements for judicial positions on radio and TV has meant many candidates are getting their names out on social media. Videos of candidates explaining their positions have started popping up on Instagram over the past few weeks, but many have just a handful of likes and views.
Some candidates are too young or inexperienced to be judges, critics say. Observers fear this much turnover of the country’s judges will destroy institutional knowledge. Many existing judges, some of whom have been in their jobs for decades, aren’t running.
Candidates are required to have graduated from law school with good grades and have between three and five years of experience, depending on the position they’re running for. According to data from the Federal Judicial Council, it took most sitting judges an average of between 16 and 20 years of experience to get their post.
“The selection process was not rigorous enough,” said Sergio López Ayllón, a lawyer and law professor in Mexico City.
To get on the ballot, candidates needed to be approved by selection committees made up of members of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. But scholars like López Ayllón say because the ruling party has control in federal and state legislatures, they also had significant sway in approving candidates, opening the door for judicial candidates to be influenced by political pressure.
Analysts have also pointed out the potential danger of electing judges in states in Mexico where drug cartels are powerful.
“In general, in elections in Mexico, and we’ve seen this play out brutally in recent years, organized crime is exercising an influence there,” said Stephanie Brewer, the Mexico director at the Washington Office on Latin America. “That often takes the form of violence.”'
A few candidates with ties to organized crime are running in the judicial elections — including the former lawyer for the notorious cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
In Sonora, two candidates have been flagged as “high risk” by the nonprofit watchdog group Defensorxs. One of those candidates has been linked in the media with the disappearance of a Sonoran journalist in 2005, but was never investigated.
Back at the festival in Hermosillo, Ana Duarte is selling tote bags and jean jackets, hand painted with colorful designs and feminist messages.
“I’d like to vote, but I’m not familiar with the candidates,” Duarte said. She knows the names of a few but feels overwhelmed by the sheer number of people on the ballot.
Besides not having enough information about the candidates, Duarte said she also doesn’t trust her government to run a free and fair election. She likes the idea of voting for judicial positions in theory, but mistrusts most candidates. Those candidates now include people running to be judges.
“I think it would be a very good option if it was something more honest,” Duarte said.
