Mexico steps into unknown with world’s first popular election of all judges: ‘A blind date with democracy’

Delia Quiroa, a candidate for federal judge, makes her pitch to a butcher in Culiacán’s central market, on 16 May. Photograph: Jesús Verdugo

On a heat-dazed afternoon in Culiacán, the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, a speaker by the cathedral was droning through an advert for the judicial elections on loop when a plume of smoke appeared in the sky. A flicker of agitation ran through the plaza.

After months of cartel conflict, Sinaloa is on edge. Yet on 1 June, it and the rest of Mexico will start to elect every judge in the country, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, by popular vote.