Delia Quiroa’s Journey: From Grave Locator to District Judge in Sinaloa

Delia Quiroa (Culiacán, 42 years old) was just one semester away from graduating in Mechatronics Engineering when her brother Roberto was kidnapped for the first time. He, who helped her pay for University, always told her: “You, who are smart, need to study.” He also urged her to take her daughter and leave Reynosa, in the border state of Tamaulipas, “because things were getting dangerous.” He was a chef who also bought and sold cars; the Gulf Cartel kidnapped him in February 2013 while he was delivering an order to a restaurant. They demanded a ransom, the family paid, and he was released. Later, there would be another kidnapping and another ransom in September of that year, and yet another, the following year, on March 10. By then, the family had run out of money to pay for his release, and they never saw him again. Delia Quiroa then embarked on a journey that culminated on June 1. She forgot about engineering and began combing the territory and searching for graves. She became a lawyer, and finally, this Sunday, with 81,000 votes, she won the position of district judge in mixed matters.

The elections on June 1 for the first time in history put 2,700 judicial positions up for popular election, including this defender of human rights, who will stop litigating to cross to the other side. “It has been a long journey,” she says. “It’s 10 years of fighting against the judicial system that is not functioning and is not providing protection, justice, and truth to people,” she explains over the phone to this newspaper. Her position is crucial in amparo trials, she elaborates, because “she is the one who protects you from the authorities when there is abuse, negligence, or omission.”

That has been her great obsession all these years, which is why she became a lawyer in the first place. “When I started going to the authorities, I realized that justice was also a business. They promised they would look for him [my brother], and they didn’t, and some lawyers I hired didn’t help me either because they weren’t interested,” she recounts: “So I told myself: I have to study this because if not, we will continue to struggle.” If she wanted results, she became convinced she had to take the initiative herself, which materialized in the founding of the Collective March 10, named after the date her brother disappeared.

Edith González, president of another organization of searchers in Reynosa, describes Quiroa as “smart, bold, brave, and helpful.” “I have only good things to say,” she exclaims. They have coincided many times, the activist says, and Quiroa has relied on her whenever something got “stuck.” “She doesn’t give up, she is very determined in what she seeks, and above all, she is a very just person. She is one of the best searchers I know in Tamaulipas,” she concludes her portrait.

In a country bearing the weight of 129,000 disappearances, skepticism or even rejection also reaches other similar organizations, which do not always manage to understand each other. “We have many colleagues who are searchers, and when they get a position, they forget that they have families suffering behind them,” warns Susana Bañuelos, head of one of the collectives operating in Sinaloa, the area that will fall under Quiroa’s judicial authority. “I have had bad experiences, even with colleagues who have become directors of the Victims’ Commission, who say they are going to support you and don’t,” she laments: “I hope she doesn’t change.” For others, like Alma Rojo, president of another state collective that has had several conflicts with Quiroa, the news has come like a cold shower. “We don’t see it as hope,” she points out.

The arrival of an activist like Quiroa to the judiciary is, in any case, a small shake-up for a system where those worlds have been separated by a wall—sometimes of bureaucracy, sometimes of corruption or political interests—that is difficult to breach. “You cannot measure the success of the election by the arrival of underrepresented profiles to the Judiciary because that could be achieved in other ways,” warns Laurence Pantin, coordinator of the Justice Observatory of the Tecnológico de Monterrey, “but it is interesting that the reform has allowed access for those profiles.” “It will be very interesting to analyze her performance and that of other judges, and see if the administration of justice improves,” she adds.

Quiroa herself opposed the reform at the time and acknowledges: “Abstentionism favored candidates like us because we won with few votes. That’s the sad part.” The proposals she brings to office—small, concrete, and related to her functions—at least show some knowledge of the subject she will oversee. Among them, she includes facilitating access to case files for amparo applicants, having computers in courts so that low-income citizens can access online amparo trials, and prioritizing the urgent indirect amparo cases framed in Article 15 of the law in situations where people’s lives are in danger.

She adds, also with more emphasis: “I would like to sanction authorities that waste people’s time when they deny them their rights. When a person goes to an amparo trial, it is because they are alleging abuse of authority. I have seen that in the sentences we received, there was never a sanction for these authorities, which is why they keep doing it, and that is why they delay justice again.” She knows it by heart and repeats it quickly: “The law allows for disqualification from holding public office, fines, and even criminal sanctions.”

Delia Quiroa took refuge in the State of Mexico with her daughter after her brother was kidnapped. She lived in Neza until her return to Sinaloa, the state where she was born, last year, but it is in Reynosa where she has carried out all her work as an activist, going back and forth. There she has reported state police for corruption and kidnapping and has filed amparo lawsuits against various authorities, she says, which is why she decided not to run there: “For safety, and to avoid conflicts of interest if I have cases related to my collective.” Her mother will lead the organization when she assumes office.

Quiroa now faces the challenge of convincing the skeptical organizations in Sinaloa, as well as the rest of the citizenry, that her triumph is more than an aesthetic change and represents, in some way, a victory for them as well: to process their cases and implant a different sensitivity. The discourse is there, the trajectory is also there, but the actions are missing. “I want to make a difference and do things right. The people who voted for me voted with that same hope,” she asserts. In this newly implemented model of popular election, it will be up to them to determine if she fulfilled her duties and deserves to retain the position or if this new journey she embarks on now will end in the next judicial elections where she will again stake her judicial robe.