Mexico’s Supreme Court Rules Indigenous People Entitled to Interpreters from First Contact with Authorities

Mexico City — Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that indigenous people are entitled to an interpreter from the first moment they come into contact with criminal justice authorities, even if they have not yet been formally accused.

By a unanimous vote, the court’s full bench granted an amparo — a legal protection against constitutional rights violations — to a Maya man from Pucnachén, Campeche, who faced charges of negligent injury. The court established that the right to interpreter assistance is non-waivable and must be guaranteed throughout the entire proceedings so that indigenous people are not left defenseless.

“The right of indigenous people to be assisted by an interpreter is triggered from the first contact with the authorities, even when a person appears as a witness or as someone providing information and not as the accused,” Justice Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, author of the ruling, said.

Justice Giovani Figueroa Mejía stressed that guaranteeing that right “ensures that every indigenous person can use their own identity when appearing for the first time before judicial authorities under equal conditions.”

The case dates to Oct. 22, 2016, when the man was riding a motorcycle along the Calkiní-Dzitbalché highway in Campeche and allegedly collided with a tricycle carrying two people, injuring both. The crash led prosecutors to open an investigation.

On April 8, 2017, he appeared before the prosecutor’s office in Calkiní to give his version of the crash and allowed an expert to photograph his motorcycle. He was not assisted by a lawyer or a Maya-language interpreter. In February 2019 he testified again, now as a suspect, assisted by a public defender but still with no interpreter.

In March 2022, he was formally linked to the case, and two months later the Campeche prosecutor’s office filed charges, relying in part on evidence from the expert and from a police officer who had interviewed him.

At a pretrial hearing in March 2023, his defense sought to exclude evidence gathered during those earlier proceedings because they had been carried out without an interpreter. The judge admitted the evidence, and a subsequent amparo request was rejected by a judge who argued that during his first appearance the man had only been providing information and was not yet formally accused.

The man appealed, and in October 2024 the case was taken up by the Supreme Court’s then-First Chamber. The court overturned the earlier decision, granted the amparo and found that the proceedings conducted without an interpreter were unlawful. It also ordered a fresh review of whether to admit the police officer’s and expert’s testimony and instructed that the ruling be translated into Maya.