Indigenous rights defender elected head of top Mexican court [Video]

Hugo Aguilar, an Indigenous rights defender and former advisor to Mexico’s Zapatista guerrilla movement, won election to become the head of the country’s Supreme Court, official results showed Thursday.

The change in the key post, long reserved for elite jurists, follows unprecedented elections on Sunday in which Mexico became the first country in the world to choose judges at all levels at the ballot box.

Aguilar, a constitutional law specialist and member of the Indigenous group Mixtec, is now one of the highest profile Indigenous leaders in Latin America.

During his campaign, he proclaimed “it’s our turn” and denounced the “exclusion and abandonment” of native peoples.

Around 20 percent of Mexicans identify as Indigenous.

Aguilar was a legal advisor to the now demobilized Zapatistas during negotiations with the government following an armed uprising in 1994.

He has said Mexico’s Indigenous peoples are owed a “a significant debt.”

Aguilar worked at the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples under President …