Politics: Shielding allies, targeting rivals, and the politics of Mexican justice amid the erosion of the rule of law
Two nearly simultaneous scandals have thrust Mexico's fractured rule of law back into the spotlight: leaked audio recordings implicating Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila in apparent negotiations with U.S. authorities, and the arrest and prosecution of former Governor Ernesto Ruffo on fuel-smuggling charges that his defense calls evidence free.
The recordings show Ávila discussing possible FBI, DHS, and OFAC sanctions, hiring a Miami-based lawyer, and expressing willingness to share what she knew from state security roundtables—conduct that suggests an offer to cooperate as an informant in exchange for avoiding prosecution. Her shifting and often contradictory explanations, together with her husband's ongoing investigation for weapons, drug, and money-laundering offenses, only deepen the suspicion. Yet President Sheinbaum has accepted her account largely at face value, distinguishing between offering cooperation and actually transferring sensitive information, while Security Secretary García Harfuch said there is no evidence that classified information had been disclosed.
Ruffo's case follows the opposite trajectory. Despite testifying as a witness rather than a defendant as recently as November, he was arrested in July and sent to a maximum-security prison, with his defense arguing that prosecutors added him to the case at the last minute without new evidence, held a closed hearing in apparent violation of constitutional transparency requirements, and gave the defense only days to review a nineteen-volume file. The shift from a career judge who rejected the original arrest warrants to a newly elected judge who granted them—adding Ruffo along the way—reinforces concerns that judicial outcomes, not just prosecutorial decisions, are increasingly shaped by political convenience.
Together, the two cases appear to serve a dual political purpose: diverting attention from the governor's scandal while pinning the fuel-theft narrative on a prominent opposition figure, even as evidence continues to implicate ruling-party officials, former Navy leadership, and Customs personnel. This pattern is not new. A review of prosecutorial conduct since 2018 shows a consistent record of politically driven investigations, selective prosecutions, and retaliation against inconvenient judges, now aggravated by the dismantling of autonomous oversight bodies and doubts about the independence of an elected judiciary—at least forty judges reportedly face disciplinary proceedings widely seen as retaliatory.
Compounding this erosion, President Sheinbaum publicly instructed an official to disregard legal restrictions in favor of "common sense", a directive analysts describe as fundamentally different from—and arguably more corrosive than—López Obrador's personal disregard for the law, since it could be interpreted as authorizing any official to selectively ignore rules they find inconvenient. Taken together, these episodes point to a rule-of-law crisis extending well beyond individual cases, threatening the institutional credibility of both law enforcement and the judiciary in Mexico.
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