Apocalypse now?
Apocalypse now?
Eclipse mania, Sinaloan serenades and "nuclear war" in the Supreme Court
Welcome to a news round-up edition of The Mexpatriate.
We are just 32 days away from election day on June 2. While campaign shenanigans, poll updates, debate recaps and electoral violence inevitably lead the headlines, the national conversation has also been buffeted by both international—and even cosmic matters—this month. But first, a musical interlude.
Mazatlán has had a newsy spring so far. With Semana Santa vacation in full swing, a controversy bubbled up pitting banda musicians against some local hoteliers looking to restrict their booming beach ballads—in the name of protecting tourist sensibilities. The musicians held protests, police got rough and eight people were arrested (since released). The scandal was magnified by social media, elevating it to the national level, with even President López Obrador weighing in to say the musicians had “every right” to protest. In the end, a truce was reached, and the musicians agreed to some municipal restrictions on their hours.
And so, the quintessentially Sinaloan banda—a brassy mix of central European and tropical rhythms—plays on.
Mazatlán was also the epicenter of solar eclipse mania on April 8, as one of the prime places to see totality.
AMLO visited the city for the event, along with thousands of tourists from around the globe. I witnessed the eclipse, or the “sun devoured” as the ancient Mexica called it, from a remote archipelago located five hours by ferry from Mazatlán (more on this adventure soon).
Ancient cultures, including in Mesoamerica, were keenly attuned to eclipses, viewing them as prophetic harbingers of change. Political upheaval could follow; eras came to an end, even though the world did not.
While today we look down at our phones instead of up at the heavens, it’s not hard to find signs of apocalypse in the age of doomscrolling—billionaires building survivalist bunkers with fiery moats? A rise in deadly rat pee infections in NYC? Ritual chicken sacrifice to Tláloc in the Mexican senate? Oh, and World War III?
But during those minutes of daytime dusk in the path of totality on April 8, our collective attention was quietly transfixed by the sky; I felt a visceral, ancient shiver of doubt—would everything really go back to how it was?
The sun came back, the spell was broken and the noise resumed. A new era dawns?
Mexico vs Ecuador showdown
Latin America’s leaders are a testy lot these days, launching barbs and trading insults with each other across the hemisphere. But the series of events that led to the severing of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Ecuador on April 6 took regional tensions to another level.
Before getting into the Ecuadorean police raid on the Mexican Embassy in Quito, a bit of context.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has had a tumultuous term since taking office in November. Elections were called last summer in Ecuador after the impeachment of President Guillermo Lasso, and were then marred by violence when candidate Fernando Villavicencio was murdered outside of a campaign rally. Noboa went on to defeat the leftist candidate Luisa González, part of ex-president Rafael Correa’s movement. Correa, who was president for ten years, lives in Belgium and was sentenced in absentia by an Ecuadorean court in 2018 for bribery (Interpol denied requests from the Ecuadorean government to issue an arrest warrant, however). Correa is considered one of the wave of 21st-century socialists of Latin America, and counts AMLO as an admirer.
Back to Noboa. After a dramatic outbreak of violence in January that began with the disappearance of a notorious gang leader, “Fito,” from prison and culminated in an armed attack on a TV station in Guayaquil that was broadcast live, Noboa declared there is an “internal armed conflict” in Ecuador and mobilized the armed forces. While Ecuador had once been one of the least violent countries in South America, it has become a key region for the transit of cocaine from Peru and Colombia, and transnational criminal groups have started bloody competition for routes. In 2023, Ecuador’s homicide rate increased 74.5% to become the highest per capita in the region.
A few days before the embassy raid, AMLO had speculated on the situation in Ecuador and floated a theory about how the murder of Villavicencio had affected the electoral prospects of his leftist rival, Luisa González, and benefited Noboa. This did not sit well with Ecuador’s current administration, who declared Mexico’s ambassador to Ecuador a persona non grata on April 4 (the third time this has happened to a Mexican ambassador in Latin America since AMLO took office).
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s former vice president, Jorge Glas, had found refuge in the Mexican Embassy after escaping from prison in December. He had been convicted twice on corruption charges after serving under both Correa and his successor, Lenín Moreno. However, AMLO and his administration consider him a victim of political persecution, and denied Ecuador’s request to arrest Glas.
Mexico has a long history of offering political asylum—to famous individuals like Leon Trotsky and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran), to waves of refugees escaping the Franco regime in Spain, or Pinochet in Chile. On Friday, April 5, the day before the raid, Mexico said it would grant the ex-VP’s asylum request.
Early on Saturday, Ecuadorean police stormed the embassy and arrested Glas. Mexico broke diplomatic relations with Ecuador soon after, “in view of the flagrant and serious violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in particular of the principle of inviolability of Mexico’s diplomatic premises and personnel, and the basic rules of international coexistence,” said Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena in a statement. Mexico filed a suit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and Ecuador’s actions have been condemned by many countries, including the United States. Ecuador announced yesterday it is also filing a complaint at the ICJ against Mexico for violating the principles of non-intervention. The first hearings in Mexico’s case were held today in The Hague.
So, why did Noboa do it?
The 36-year-old president is both emboldened by popular domestic support, yet vulnerable as he goes all-in on a crime crackdown. When AMLO made his remarks about the legitimacy of his election, Noboa was also on edge prior to a referendum on his policies, held on April 21. Voters opted to continue his militarized approach to security, so it seems his risky move worked, at least in the short term, though it has damaged Ecuador’s ability to collaborate with other governments—most critically Mexico’s of course—in combating organized crime.
“The corrupting effect”
“Nuclear war,” “Pandora’s box opened,” “the country’s future at stake.”
These are some of the terms tossed around by Mexican pundits in response to a leaked corruption investigation into the former Supreme Court (SCJN) chief justice, Arturo Zaldívar. He and his operators are accused of putting the court’s autonomy and independence “at risk,” as well as misuse of public funds, threatening judges and other misconduct, going back to 2019. Perhaps commentators got a bit carried away in the apocalyptic news atmosphere we’re living in these days, but there is no denying there’s a serious political and legal game afoot.
The investigation of Zaldívar (who resigned from the court last November to join Claudia Sheinbaum’s campaign) is being conducted by the Supreme Court, today headed by Norma Piña, in response to an anonymous complaint. After the file was leaked on April 12, the response from Zaldívar was swift, dismissing it as “clearly politically motivated” and “revenge” against the cuarta transformación (4T), as the Morena movement is known. Sheinbaum and AMLO have come to his defense, and Zaldívar announced a flurry of legal actions, including lodging a complaint against Piña with the attorney general’s office, as well as the National Electoral Institute (INE), and requesting a hearing in Congress. “This behavior from Norma Piña only demonstrates the necessity and urgency of judicial reform,” he said at a press conference with Morena president Mario Delgado.
The leaked documents detail the mechanisms of alleged corruption in the federal judiciary, but Zaldívar is hardly the only one exposed. In fact, this is why the rhetoric is so heightened: these allegations by judges and others cited in the documents are damning for the entire system and its members. Journalist Denise Maerker described it as a “striptease” by the judiciary, revealing the opaque inner workings of judicial power. Legal analyst Ana Laura Magaloni says it shows the “specific tools of pressure” used to influence judges:
“What they say isn’t surprising, but it’s the first time that they are saying it: whoever controls the carrots and sticks of careers in the judiciary can control the behavior of judges. This control panel has to do with favorable and unfavorable appointments, approvals, administrative proceedings, suspensions, trips, promotions, etc.”
Zaldívar is the standard-bearer of the sweeping judicial reform that Sheinbaum and Morena intend to implement, and while he has been known to mostly align with AMLO’s policies while serving on the court, he’s also contradicted some of the government’s judicial platform. Just two weeks ago, Secretary of the Interior Ana Luisa Alcalde spoke about the administration’s concerns about automatic pre-trial detention—according to Alcalde, if the Supreme Court rules against it, 68,000 alleged criminals would be released, which her department says is a “threat to national security.” Zaldívar has been against the abuse of automatic pre-trial detention, and attempted to have it struck down while serving as a Supreme Court justice.
Zaldívar has had a very public career, and has made no shortage of enemies. Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero—who was frustrated in his attempts to keep his sister-in-law’s daughter in prison by a Supreme Court ruling—is one of them. As is Isabel Miranda de Wallace, a woman who has been both a very visible victims’ rights advocate since her son’s alleged kidnapping in 2005, and a shadowy presence in the upper echelons of power. Six people have been languishing in prison for their involvement in the case of Hugo Wallace (no trace of him has ever been found); two of them, Jacobo Tagle and Brenda Quevedo, have yet to receive a sentence. All have reported torture and intimidation. Zaldívar had previously filed a criminal complaint against Wallace for false statements and fabricating evidence, after the case of one of the alleged kidnappers, Juana Hilda González Lomelí, was brought to the Supreme Court in 2022. The court has yet to make a ruling.
Zaldívar was also instrumental in the release of Florence Cassez in 2013, a French woman who was imprisoned (without trial) for seven years in Mexico on kidnapping charges. Her Mexican partner, Israel Vallarta, is still in prison without a sentence. In the argument Zaldívar presented to the court in favor of Cassez, he coined the term “efecto corruptor” or “corrupting effect” to refer to how a sequence of misconduct and violation of rights by law enforcement had tainted and invalidated any possible case against her.
As noted by journalist Hernán Gómez Bruera, Zaldívar himself could now become the “corrupting effect” in the Morena judicial reform gambit. A reform which, after the revelations of this investigation, everyone agrees is urgent. Will he be sacrificed at the altar of change?
The campaign beat
Xóchitl Gálvez has been emphatic with voters that she will not cut social programs, as AMLO and the morenistas have insinuated. To strengthen her point, she signed a document saying as much—and sealed it with her own blood. So far, the other candidates haven’t started pricking their thumbs to sign promises to voters, but if you’ve had any experience with Mexican bureaucracy, it may not seem too far-fetched as a requirement.
Jorge Álvarez Máynez (Movimiento Ciudadano), a distant third in the race, has had a mostly forgettable campaign so far. Except for a catchy campaign song that has been a viral hit—in South Korea. Apparently, “Máynez Presidente” has inspired a TikTok dance trend and one of these clips has racked up 5.3 million views.
On her way to a rally in Chiapas on April 21, Claudia Sheinbaum’s convoy was stopped by hooded and masked men and women. They asked her to “not forget” about the poor “when you are president,” while filming her with their cell phones, with one saying he feels “true helplessness” because the government hasn’t done anything for the area. They then thanked her for her time, and let the candidate pass. The next day, AMLO said the incident was a setup by media outlet Latinus, and Sheinbaum herself was skeptical of who was behind it as well.
N+ has published a collection of interactive maps showing historical election results in Mexico that are worth checking out. They go from the state level down to cities, even showing voting results by street. It’s catnip for politics geeks! Of particular note: Guanajuato was the only one of Mexico’s 32 states that wasn’t carried by AMLO in 2018 and in 2012, he won just eight. A demonstration of not only the tremendous electoral momentum of Morena, but also of the disillusionment following six years of Enrique Peña Nieto and the PRI. Also, I discovered my city’s voting was less homogeneous than I would have guessed.
The race for mayor of Mexico City is tightening up according to the latest poll from El Financiero, with Clara Brugada (Morena) still in the lead (42% of voter preference), but showing Santiago Taboada (PAN-PRI-PRD) is gaining on her (37%). If Taboada wins, it would be the first time a conservative party member governs the capital since the popularly-elected jefe de gobierno office was created in 1997.
As a resident of Mexico who knows little Spanish, I'm very welcoming to election news in English. My Mexican wife is certain that AMLO is a slippery thief and dictator in process, and he looks buffoonish enough to me that I believe her. I seek clarity on issues when false accusations fly between the candidates.... I hope you can further discuss concrete proposals and deeds. I mainly know that AMLO has taken apart the public health care system and offered little as a replacement, and seems unsupportive of the fair election process and the board that has ensured it. Galvez has promised infrastructure repair and ceasing taxes for low-earners. She also has a people-pleasing personality, where Sheinbaum seems only to be a thin-skinned puppet.
Outstanding, as always. A lot of news with solid context. Excellent writing. And in this issue both philosophical musings and a dash of humor. Keep up the good work. Have you considered doing a podcast? SBS