On Friday, April 5, 2024, in gross violation of international law, Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito and kidnapped the former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas. This unprecedented incident culminated a year-long effort to marginalize the largest political force in Ecuador by using lawfare tactics. 

Following his election in 2017 to the presidency on a progressive ticket, Lenín Moreno turned against his former comrades; he engaged in a systematic campaign of state repression by employing the justice system to persecute supporters of former leftist president Rafael Correa. Correa himself lives under political asylum in Belgium. Current right-wing Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s flagrant disregard for the Vienna Convention is an attempt to boost his declining popular support.

In Mexico, conservative forces are also engaging in lawfare, carrying out a scheme that could amount to the most serious assault on the country’s democracy since the 2006 fraud.

In an effort to interfere in Mexico’s electoral process, Supreme Court President Norma Piña has personally authorized a corruption probe into her predecessor, Arturo Zaldívar, based solely on an anonymous complaint submitted without any supporting evidence. Zaldívar, who presided over a court that cooperated with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government to expand social rights, stepped down as a sitting justice last year to become an advisor to presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum.

Zaldívar was quick to condemn Piña’s decision to open a probe, saying that it runs roughshod over standard practices at the country’s highest court, calling it a "witch hunt" done with "clear political intent" to interfere with the coming election. “Norma Piña's intent is political, not legal. She has placed her bets on the [opposition] candidate, she is very close to their entire group. We see how she has operated clearly in favor of the right, and any remaining doubt is now removed," said Zaldívar.

The affair’s timing has also raised eyebrows, coming days after opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate; she failed to inject much-needed energy into her floundering campaign.

Sheinbaum tapped Zaldívar to craft her proposal to reform the country’s judicial system. Mexico’s thoroughly rotten judicial system has become a key instrument of the ancien régime to protect its power and privilege and impede Morena’s agenda. Zaldívar personifies Morena’s effort to go after the conservatives taking shelter inside the country’s justice system. The smear campaign against Zaldívar attempts to undercut efforts to carry out a badly needed reform.

From Ecuador to Brazil to Mexico and throughout Latin America, the bourgeoisie, when faced with declining hegemony, has turned to lawfare tactics to stop the people’s mandate for a more just distribution of wealth. Noboa’s actions in Mexico’s Embassy in Quito show how far the right is willing to go if left unchecked.

The Mexican judicial branch’s effort to influence the election for the executive and legislative branches is an assault on Mexico's democracy itself and must be rejected outright.