Everything about The Institutional Revolutionary Party totally explained
The
Institutional Revolutionary Party
(
Spanish:
Partido Revolucionario Institucional or
PRI) is a
Mexican political party that wielded power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the
Socialist International, as is the rival
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), making Mexico one of the few nations with two major, competing parties part of the same international grouping. However, PRI is far from a socialist party and more often acts as a centre or rightist party. Its membership in the International dates from the
Mexican revolution and the founding of the party by
Plutarco Elías Calles, when the party had a clearer socialist orientation.
The adherents of the PRI party are known in Mexico as
priistas and the party is nicknamed
el tricolor because of its use of the colors green, white and red.
Profile
The Institutional Revolutionary Party is described by some scholars as a "state party", a term which captures both the non-competitive history and character of the party itself, and the inextricable connection between the party and the Mexican nation-state for much of the
20th century.
Although the armed phase of the
Mexican revolution had ended in
1920, Mexico had continued to encounter political unrest, and presidential elections were usually preceded by military uprisings. A grave political crisis caused by the
1928 assassination of president-elect
Álvaro Obregón led to the founding in 1929 of the
National Revolutionary Party (Spanish: "Partido Nacional Revolucionario" or PNR) by
Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico's president from 1924 to 1928. The intent was to institutionalize the
Mexican Revolution. In the first years of the party's existence, the PNR was, above all, an instrument Calles, 'Maximum Chief' of the party, used to continue exercising power in an era known as the
Maximato. The presidents of this period,
Emilio Portes Gil,
Pascual Ortiz Rubio and
Abelardo L. Rodríguez were little more than puppets of Calles. This ended with the election of
Lázaro Cárdenas, a candidate handpicked by Calles, in
1934. It quickly became clear Cárdenas wasn't accepting a subordinate role like his predecessors did. After establishing himself in the presidency, in 1936 Cárdenas had Calles and dozens of his corrupt associates arrested or deported to the United States. Cárdenas became perhaps Mexico's most-popular
20th-century president and most renowned for
expropriating the oil interests of the
United States and
European
petroleum companies in the run-up to
World War II. He was a person of
leftist ideas who nationalized different industries and provided many social institutions which are dear to the Mexican people and had the party renamed to Party of the Mexican Revoluion (PRM). Cárdenas' successor
Manuel Ávila Camacho gave the party its present name in
1946.
After several decades in power the PRI became a symbol of corruption and electoral fraud. Because of this latter, its
left went on to form its own party the
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989. The conservative
National Action Party (PAN) became a stronger party after 1976 when it obtained the support from businessmen after recurring economic crises. However, this was never achieved and his main intention was to create the broad-based political alliances necessary for the PRI's long-term survival,
splitting the party into mass organizations representing different interest groups and acting as the political consciousness of the country in a more personal level (for example, the
Confederación Nacional Campesina, the farmer's group). His strategy with the party mirrored the
balanced ticket approach of
1930s Chicago Mayor
Anton Cermak, who created the
Cook County Democratic Organization, characteristic of Chicago by balancing ethnic interests. Settling disputes and power struggles within the party structure helped prevent congressional gridlock and possible armed rebellions, but this style of dispute resolution also created a "
rubber stamp" legislative apparatus.
The party, under its three different names, held every political position until 1946 when the PAN started winning posts for
municipal president and
federal deputies and
senators, starting in
1946, after the party changed its name to its current name
Partido Revolucionario Institucional. The party had, by then, acquired a reputation for corruption, and while this was admitted (to a degree) by some of its affiliates, its supporters maintained that the role of the party was crucial in the modernization and stabilization of
Mexico.
The Mexican Miracle
The first four decades of government of the PRI are dubbed the "Mexican Miracle", a period of economic growth through substitution of imports and low inflation. Much of the growth was spurred by successful national development plans which, following the steps of the Soviet Union, provided for major investment on infrastructure. From 1940 to 1970 GDP increased sixfold and the population only doubled while the peso-dollar parity was maintained.
The Tlatelolco Massacre
The improvement of the economy had a disparate impact in different social sectors and discontent started growing within the low classes. In 1968
Mexico City became the first city in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world to be chosen to host an
Olympic Games. Using the international focus on the country, students at the
National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) protested the lack of democracy and social justice. President
Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970) ordered the army to occupy the university to suppress the revolt and minimize the disruption of the Olympic Games. On
October 2,
1968 student groups demanding the withdrawal of the IPN protested at the
Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Unaccustomed to this type of protests, the Mexican Government made an unusual move by asking the United States for assistance, through
LITEMPO, a spy-program to inform the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US to obtain information from Mexico. The CIA responded by sending military radios, weapons and ammunition. The LITEMPO had previously provided the Díaz Ordaz government with 1,000
.223 Colt automatic ammunition in 1963. During the protests shots were fired and a number of students died (officially 39, unofficially hundreds) and hundreds were arrested. The President of the Olympic Committee then declared that the protests were against the government and not the Olympics so the games proceeded.
The economic crises
The government of
Luis Echeverría (1970-76), secretary of interior during the Díaz Ordaz administration, increased social spending, through external debt, at a time when oil production and prices were surging. However, the growth of the economy came accompanied by inflation and then by a plummeting of oil prices and increases in interest rates. Investment started fleeing the country and the peso became overvalued, to prevent a devaluation and further fleeing of investments, the
Bank of Mexico borrowed 360 million dollars from the
Federal Reserve with the promise of stabilizing the economy. External debt reached the level of $25 billion dollars. Unable to contain the fleeing of dollars, Echeverría allowed the peso to float for the first time on
August 31,
1976, then again later and the peso lost half of its value. hoping for stabilization of the oil prices continued social spending through heavy borrowing President López Portillo. López Portillo refused to devaluate the currency
López Portillo also freed political prisoners and proposed a reform called
Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales which gave official registry to opposition groups such as the
Partido Demócrata Mexicano and the
Partido Comunista Mexicano. This law also created positions in the lower chamber of congress for opposition parties through proportionality of votes, relative majority, uninominal and plurinominal. As a result 1979 saw the first independent (non-PRI) communist deputies in the
Congress of Mexico. which was won by
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, obtaining 50.89% of the votes (according to official figures) versus 32% of Cárdenas. The official results were delayed, with the Secretary of the Interior (until then, the organizer of elections) blaming it on a computer system failure. Cárdenas, who claimed to have won and claimed such computer failure was caused by a manipulation of the system to count votes.
Manuel Clouthier also claimed to have won, although not as vocally. Clouthier, Cárdenas and
Rosario Ibarra de Piedra then complained before the building of the
Secretary of the Interior. Clouthier and his followers then set up other protests, among them one at the
Chamber of Deputies, demanding that the electoral packages be opened. In
1989, Clouthier presented an
alternative cabinet (a
British style
Shadow Cabinet) with (
Diego Fernández de Cevallos,
Jesús González Schmall,
Fernando Canales Clariond,
Francisco Villarreal Torres,
Rogelio Sada Zambrano,
María Elena Álvarez Bernal,
Moisés Canales,
Vicente Fox,
Carlos Castillo Peraza and
Luis Felipe Bravo Mena as cabinet members and Clouthier as cabinet coordinator). The purpose of this cabinet was to vigilate the accions of the government. Clouthier died next October in an accident with
Javier Calvo, a federal deputy. The accident was claimed by the PAN as a state assassination since then. That same year, the PRI lost its first state government with the election of
Ernesto Ruffo Appel as
governor of Baja California.
Death of Colosio and the loss of majority in Congress
In
1990 Peruvian writer
Mario Vargas Llosa called the government under the PRI
la dictadura perfecta
("The perfect dictatorship"). In 1994, for the first time since the revolution a presidential candidate was murdered,
Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta. His campaign director,
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, was subsequently elected in the first presidential election monitored by international observers. The
1994 economic crisis in Mexico caused the PRI to lose its absolute majority in both chambers of the
federal congress for the first time in 1997.
Loss of the presidency of Mexico
Prior to the 2000 general elections, the PRI held its first primaries to elect the party's presidential candidate. The primary candidates, nicknamed "los cuatro fantásticos" (Spanish for
The Fantastic Four), were:
The favorites in the primaries were Labastida and Madrazo, and the latter initiated a campaign against the first, perceived as Zedillo's candidate since many former secretaries of the interior were chosen as candidates by the president. His campaign, produced by prominent publicist
Carlos Alazraki, had the motto "Dale un Madrazo al dedazo" or "Give a Madrazo to the
dedazo" with "madrazo" being slang for a "strike" and "dedazo" a slang used to describe the unilaterally choosing of candidates by the president (literally "finger-strike").
In the
presidential elections of
July 2 2000, its candidate
Francisco Labastida Ochoa was defeated by
Vicente Fox, after getting only 36.1% of the popular vote. It was to be the first Presidential electoral defeat of the PRI. Many considered that this event would mark the party's downfall. In the
senatorial elections of the same date, the party won with 38.1%, or 33 out of 128 seats in the
Senate of Mexico.
The PRI as an opposition party
After much restructuring, the party was able to make a recovery, winning the greatest number of seats (5% short of a true majority) in Congress in 2003: at these
elections, the party won 224 out of 500 seats in the
Chamber of Deputies, remaining as the largest single party in both the
Chamber of Deputies and
Senate. In the
Federal District the PRI obtained only one borough mayorship
(jefe delegacional) out of 16, and no
first-past-the-post members of the city assembly. The PRI recouped some significant losses on the state level (most notably, the
governorship of former PAN stronghold
Nuevo León). On
August 6,
2004, in two closely-contested elections in
Oaxaca and
Tijuana, PRI candidates
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and
Jorge Hank Rhon won the races for the governorship and
municipal presidency respectively. The PAN had held control of the president's office of the
municipality of Tijuana for 15 years. Six out of eight gubernatorial elections held during 2005 were won by the PRI:
Quintana Roo,
Hidalgo,
Colima,
Estado de México,
Nayarit, and
Coahuila. The PRI then controlled the states on the country's northern border with the US except for
Baja California.
Later that year
Roberto Madrazo,
president of the PRI, left his post to seek a nomination as the party's candidate in the 2006 presidential election. According to the statutes, the presidency of the party would then fall on the head of
Elba Esther Gordillo as party secretary. The rivalry between Madrazo and Gordillo caused
Mariano Palacios Alcocer instead to become president of the party. After what was perceived an imposition of Madrazo as candidate a group was formed called
Unidad Democrática (Spanish: "Democratic Unity"), although nicknamed
Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo (Spanish: "Everybody United Against Madrazo" or "TUCOM") which was formed by governors and former state governors:
Arturo Montiel (former governor of the State of Mexico)
Enrique Jackson (federal senator)
Tomás Yarrington (governor of Tamaulipas)
Enrique Martínez (former governor of Coahuila)
Manuel Núñez (governor of Hidalgo)
Montiel won the right to run against Madrazo for the candidacy but withdrew when it was made public that he and his French wife had multi-million properties in Europe. Madrazo and Everardo Moreno contended in the primaries which was won by the first. Madrazo then represented the PRI and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) in the Alliance for Mexico coalition.
During his campaign Madrazo declared that the PRI and PRD were "first cousins", to this Emilio Chuayffet Chemor responded that if that was the case then Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), candidate of the PRD would also be a first cousin and he might win the election.
AMLO was, by then, the favorite in the polls, with many followers within the PRI. Madrazo, second at the polls, then released TV spots against AMLO with little success, his campaign was managed again by Alazraki. Felipe Calderón ran a more successful campaign and then tied with Madrazo and later surpassed him as the second favorite. Gordillo, also the teacher's union leader, resentful against Madrazo, helped a group of teachers constitute the New Alliance Party. Divisions within the party and a successful campaign of the PAN candidate caused Madrazo to fall to third place. The winner, as announced by the Federal Electoral Institute and valuated by the Mexican Election Tribunal amidst a controversy, was Felipe Calderón of the ruling PAN Party. On November 20 of the same year, a group of young PRI politicians launched a movement that's set to reform and revolutionize the party.
In the 2006 legislative elections the party won 106 out of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 out of 128 Senators.
In 2007 the PRI re-gained the governorship of Yucatán and was the party with the most mayorships and state congresspeople in the elections in Yucatán (tying with the PAN in the number of deputies), Chihuahua, Durango, Aguascalientes, Veracruz, Chiapas and Oaxaca. The PRI obtained the most mayorships in Zacatecas and the second most deputies in the congressional elections of Zacatecas and Baja California.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Institutional Revolutionary Party'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://institutional_revolutionary_party.totallyexplained.com">Institutional Revolutionary Party Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
