Indigenous lawyer who advised Zapatistas will be president of Mexico’s Supreme Court
Hugo Aguilar, a constitutional law expert and storied indigenous human rights defender, will take the lead of the highest court in the land
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Judicial elections in Mexico on Sunday yielded mixed results and a low turnout, but they have also resulted in the election of Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an indigenous human rights lawyer with a long history of representing indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities.
He is a member of the Mixtec indigenous community and ran with the support of the Morena party, Claudia Sheinbaum’s ruling coalition.
During a career of more than 30 years, the constitutional law expert has worked as legal defense for indigenous communities. He was also an advisor to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in the Chiapas dialogues in 1996 — an indigenous rebel group which staged a short-lived uprising in southern Chiapas state in 1994, which resulted in their autonomous rule over the territories they hail from.
He is currently the general coordinator of Indigenous Rights at the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI). He has also been a consultant for the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights in Mexico and Undersecretary of Indigenous Rights of Oaxaca (2011 to 2016).
During his campaign, Aguilar proposed a leadership of the nation’s highest court that would build "a new model of justice with a multicultural perspective, respect for nature and the human moral sense that judicial decisions should possess."
“Resolutions should not be based solely on abstract legal reasoning, but should be based on the reality and context of those who come to the justice system,” he wrote on his website.
Indigenous peoples make up 20% of Mexico’s population, according to the government’s most recent census, though they are underrepresented in government.
Morena-backed candidates won the majority of the remaining eight posts on the Supreme Court.
Critics of the judicial reform have called the direct election of all the country’s judges “radical”, claim the measure is a power-grab by the Morena party, and that the process allows for corruption of the process by special-interest groups.
Backers of the reform argue that it will make the judiciary more democratic and beholden to voters.
Some supporters outside of the Morena party have pointed out that the previous process, by which judges were simply appointed by politicians, was equally subject to corruption or influence by special interests.
The Mexican public has very little confidence in the country’s judicial and justice systems. Courts have long been plagued by rampant corruption, nepotism, and subservience to monied interests in both the federal and local judiciaries.
In 2024, the Wilson Center said that the system was “in desperate need of reform.”Courts have been totally incapable of addressing the impunity, insecurity, and violence that afflict mainly the poorest sectors of society,” they wrote, “denying justice to those who cannot afford it, while providing a quick remedy to those who can.”
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