Candidate who defended El Chapo presents himself in the elections

While drivers are seated in traffic near the Pont des Ameriques connecting Mexico to the United States, Silvia Delgado is woven between cars distributing leaflets.

“I am judged criminal,” she said strongly. “Vote for number 12 on voting ballots!”

The most happily destroyed their windows and accepts a leaflet of it. But during the rather unique Sunday elections – the first of the two votes by which the Mexicans will do so Choose all of the judiciary by the direct ballot – Silvia Delgado is not an ordinary candidate.

The name of her best known client: she was the defense lawyer of the famous drug lord, she was the lawyer for the defense of notorious Drug Lord. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.

His detractors say that his past defending the head of the Sinaloa cartel should disqualify it to present itself as a judge. She gives this short idea.

“Why should he do my job?” She retorts, her raised heckles immediately raised any suggestion of a conflict of interest.

“To defend the individual guarantees of people? To set up an adequate technical defense for a human being? Why should it make me illegitimate?” she asked.

Silvia Delgado has not been sentenced for any crime, faced any accusation and is not the subject of an investigation – whether on her links with El Chapo or anything else.

But a main organization of human rights and transparency in Mexico called Defensorxes included it in a list of 19 “high -risk candidates” in the elections. In addition to Ms. Delgado, the list includes a candidate with a conviction for drug trafficking and another facing accusations of orchestration of violence against journalists.

The director of Defensorxs, Miguel Alfonso Meza, thinks that the so-called “high-risk candidates” are a danger to the legitimacy of the Mexico’s justice system:

“Someone who has already worked with a cartel, it is very difficult to go out, even if it was only as a lawyer. It is not even a question of knowing if she is a good person or a bad person,” explains Mr. Meza, referring to Silvia Delgado.

“”The Sinaloa cartel is not only “El Chapo” Guzman. It is a company that has criminal and economic interests that are resolved in the judicial system. The cartel could put it pressure to show loyalty because it has already been their employee. “”

Silvia Delgado is visibly stiff in the mention of Defensorxs and Miguel Alfonso Meza.

“It is completely stupid,” heals, saying that she challenged them to “dig in her past as much as they wish”. She also rejects their main accusation that she was paid with drug money and could be compromised if she is elected judge.

“How can you prove this? I received a payment which was the same as any normal monthly payment which was paid to me by the lawyers, the members of his legal team. I am not his daughter or his sister or anything. I am a professional.”

Ms. Delgado competes for one of the more than 7,500 judicial posts to be won – local magistrates in the nine judges of the Supreme Court.

While in discussion, the legal reform caused generalized demonstrations of law students and a strike by workers in the legal system. His criticisms argue that the election of each judge in Mexico is equivalent to the politicization of the country’s judicial system.

“Of course, it is a political attack (against the judiciary),” explains Miguel Alfonso Meza.

“Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not like having constraints of the judiciary. When the pressure has become too large and the constraints are too tight, the only solution they found was to withdraw all the judges in the country,” he adds.

This reform was adopted before President Claudia Sheinbaum Tightened, but she is a ferrant from it and the polls suggest that he also has a large approval among the electorate.

Supporters point out that the United States, Switzerland and Bolivia have many of their judges. But Mexico will become the first country in the world to elect them all. The markets are not convinced with investors who are afraid of the perspective of the part of power controlling the presidency, the legislative power and the judiciary.

Miguel Alfonso Meza believes that problems will result from “agreements and negotiations that judges must do with political actors … in order to obtain the support they need to win the elections”.

One of the 64 candidates for the search for a Supreme Court seat is Olivia Aguirre Bonilla. Also of Ciudad Juárez, its legal history is in human rights law and as an activist against sexist violence in the notoriously dangerous border city.

Like all candidates, Ms. Aguirre Bonilla had to pay for her campaign on her own pocket – candidates are prohibited from accepting public or private funding and prohibited from buying advertising sites. As such, she mainly used social media to prevent her plan from 6 points from tightening exorbitant wages at the opening of the audiences of the Supreme Court to the public.

While it recognizes criticisms on the potential politicization of the Mexico judicial system, Aguirre Bonilla believes that voting is an opportunity for a significant change in a collapsed, corrupt and nepotic judicial system.

“I think that all the citizens of Mexico are politicized, and we are all part of public life,” she said.

“The difference here is that our” untouchable “legal system – and it was untouchable because it was controlled by the elites, by privilege – for the first time in history will be voted. It will be democratized by popular vote.”

Many people in the judiciary were there by influence and family ties, maintains Aguirre Bonilla, and he does not have the legitimacy of executive and legislative branches.

“This vote will grant the judicial system true independence because it is not chosen by the President of the Republic, but elected by the people of Mexico to represent them.”

Until now, the arguments concerning constitutionality and legitimacy, during the process and the candidates have been bitter and ferocious.

Now, all eyes turn to polling stations, in particular on participation and abstention rates as indicators of Mexican support for reform.

As for Silvia Delgado, the woman who defended the most sought after drug lord in Mexico, she just hopes that the inhabitants of Ciudad Juárez will respect her work enough to allow her to sit in judgment other criminals who are carried before her.