Outside Mexico’s Senate building on Tuesday, masked university students dressed as Supreme Court justices took turns smashing a black piñata with a stick. The piñata, covered in the word “justice,” was filled with fake money, a representation of the alleged corruption plaguing the country’s judiciary.
“The election of judges and magistrates by popular vote implies a democratization of one of the most important powers of our country,” said Layla Manilla, 21, one of the politics students who participated. Manilla is one of thousands of Mexicans who took to the streets to express their support — or opposition — to the controversial bill promoted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his allies, which on Wednesday overcame its biggest hurdle when it was narrowly approved in the Senate.
In interviews with The New York Times, Mexicans expressed a range of concerns and aspirations about the measure. Some worried about the end of judicial independence, while others welcomed the opportunity to vote for those responsible for delivering justice. Many more were indifferent to the initiative, unsure of exactly what to expect from the change.
The new legislation will shift the appointment of members of the judiciary from one based on training and qualifications to one where voters elect judges and there are fewer requirements for holding office.
Some 7,000 judges would lose their jobs, from the president of the Supreme Court to local judges, and Mexicans could start voting as early as next year.
The measure still needs to be approved by a majority of state legislatures, but is expected to pass easily since the ruling Morena party and its allies hold a majority in state congresses. As of early Thursday morning, 15 states had already approved it and one had rejected it.
However, in the state of Yucatán, a group of protesters broke into the local congress on Wednesday, where Morena and its allies have the majority. While the protesters asked them to suspend the vote, chanting “The judiciary will not fall!” and shouting “Listen to us!”, the legislators decided to postpone it. They approved the project a few hours later. Opponents of the measures also protested in other states and tried to break into the congressional buildings, resulting in some injuries.
In recent weeks, more than 50,000 judges and court workers have gone on strike, and protesters stormed the Senate building in Mexico City on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the vote. Senators were moved to an alternate location with a large police operation.
The president’s insistence on passing the measures has kept financial markets on edge, with the economy down about 15 percent since early June.
The government argues that the measure is crucial to modernizing the judicial system, rooting out corruption and restoring trust in a system marred by graft, nepotism and influence peddling. López Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, will take office on Oct. 1 and has fully backed the plan.
Critics, however, oppose the bill, arguing that it would not effectively address corruption but instead reinforce López Obrador’s nationalist political agenda. “Judges, magistrates and ministers are the voice of the law and the Constitution, not of the people,” said Luis Hernández, 21, a law and economics student, moments after delivering a fiery speech during a protest at the Senate building. “They are the voice of reason. There is no point in having a judicial career if in the end you have to be popular to deliver justice.”
José Luis Cázares Gayosso, 55, a federal employee who lives in Iztapalapa, a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, said he had problems with the judicial system and needed to change. He said it took too long — four years — to get custody of his two children after he separated from his partner, and it was resolved in 2019 only after he took legal action against the judge.
Still, Cazares Gayosso said, he preferred that judges remain appointed but be forced to leave office early. He said he feared that voting for them would end up giving the country’s ruling party control of the judicial system.
“It is dangerous to give all the power to one party,” he said.
Polls commissioned by the Morena party indicate that about 80 percent of respondents believe that reforming the judicial system is necessary, although other surveys have found that more than 50 percent of respondents do not know what the proposal entails. “Right now it is very fashionable that the people, that the people, are not going to abandon the people, but sometimes the people are not informed,” said Juan Diego Naranjo, a 28-year-old plumber from Cancun. “If they are not going to know much about the candidates for judges, then many will not go out to vote. If in the elections for president, governor, municipalities, many of us do not go out to vote, for judges perhaps even less.”
Naranjo admitted that he himself did not vote during the 2018 presidential elections, which López Obrador won, because he did not have time to study the campaigns. Manilla, the student who supports the bill, said: “There is never a total certainty that the majorities will make the right decisions.” But she added: “If the people make mistakes, the people will also be able to rectify them.”
Other Mexicans said they were concerned that important pieces were missing from the debate.
Laura Alvarez, 38, a restaurant manager in Monterrey in northwestern Mexico, said the election of a judge could improve public trust. She said she had a terrible experience with the judicial system when her daughter was sexually abused and the case was dismissed before it reached a judge. Still, she believes the judicial proposal needs more explanation from politicians.
“They’re not saying, ‘This is what I want to change and this is what I’m going to offer you,’” he said. “That’s where I’m at in the middle. I want transparency.”
Whatever their differences on the plan, many Mexicans largely agreed that it was long overdue to rid the system of what they said were privileges, nepotism and corruption.
Javier Martín Reyes, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said that most interactions Mexicans have with the judiciary are not at the federal level but at the local level — for example in labor, family or civil litigation — and that this is where “more reforms” are needed.
But he said two important parts of the justice system that the average Mexican deals with most often — the police and prosecutors — were not addressed in the proposal. “If Mexico today is a country with enormous rates of impunity, it is largely because the vast majority of crimes are not investigated and some that are investigated do not reach conclusions,” Reyes said. “And those that do reach conclusions are often cases that are not sufficiently well-structured or investigated to then be upheld in a court or tribunal.”
After living for a long time in a system he described as riddled with problems, José Luis Valderrama, a 68-year-old bagger in Monterrey, said it was worth trying something new, especially if voters can choose from among qualified people. “Things will change, possibly,” he said. “We don’t really know. It’s a matter of trying.”
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