The votes are in: Hugo Aguilar Ortiz will be the first Indigenous chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court

Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, an Indigenous lawyer primitively from the Mixtec portion of Oaxaca, volition beryllium the adjacent main justness of Mexico’s Supreme Court (SCJN) aft 6.1 cardinal radical voted for him connected June 1 successful Mexico’s first-ever judicial election.

According to the National Electoral Institute (INE), Aguilar had 5.3% of the votes, making him the most-voted campaigner among the aspiring ministers of the SCJN. Sunday’s predetermination saw astir 13 cardinal voters (12.3% of each Mexicans eligible to vote) who were required to prime 5 pistillate candidates for justness and 4 antheral ones from a excavation of implicit 60 aspirants.

Aguilar has nary authoritative enactment affiliation but helium worked with Morena’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador connected immoderate of the erstwhile president’s large projects. (Hugo Aguila Ortiz/XINE)

Aguilar, 51, volition beryllium sworn successful earlier the Senate connected September 1 and volition presume enactment of the Supreme Court arsenic the archetypal Indigenous main justness connected the aforesaid day.

Since the election, Aguilar has not publically declared himself winner. However, successful caller interviews, helium has expressed feeling “impressed” and “happy, precise happy,” owed to the historical value of his predetermination for Mexico’s Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities.

“I americium precise pleased that the adjacent president of the Supreme Court is an Indigenous Mixtec from Oaxaca, a precise bully lawyer,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said astatine Wednesday’s greeting property conference. “I person the privilege of knowing him.”

The caller president of the SCJN is considered sympathetic to the ruling Morena party, though helium has nary ceremonial governmental affiliation. Since 2018, helium served arsenic wide coordinator of Indigenous rights astatine the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI), wherever helium coordinated the nationalist consultations of erstwhile President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s flagship projects, including the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport.

Aguilar was nominated by the enforcement subdivision and received enactment from Sheinbaum, who successful February said, “We privation an Indigenous idiosyncratic to articulation the Supreme Court.” Although she did not notation Aguilar’s name, helium was the lone Indigenous candidate.

Government critics accidental this affinity volition destruct a captious cheque connected the enforcement and legislative power. 

With a vocation spanning implicit 30 years of acquisition advocating for the rights of the Indigenous peoples, Aguilar’s run slogan for the presumption of Supreme Court Justice was “It’s our turn.” It expressed his presumption that Mexico needed greater practice of Indigenous voices successful the country’s judiciary system. 

Before being elected arsenic caput of the SCJN, Aguilar had said that if helium were to triumph a spot connected the court, helium would not deterioration a judicial robes and would alternatively deterioration the communal attire of Indigenous communities to springiness the Supreme Court a caller representation of multicultural integration.

With reports from El País, La Jornada, CNN and El Economista