Institutional Revolutionary Party
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Spanish: [paɾˈtiðo reβolusjoˈnaɾjo jnstitusjoˈnal], PRI) is a political party in Mexico that was founded in 1929 and held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years, from 1929 to 2000, first as the National Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Nacional Revolucionario, PNR), then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, PRM) and finally as the PRI beginning in 1946.
Institutional Revolutionary Party Partido Revolucionario Institucional
4 March 1929 (as PNR)
30 March 1938 (as PRM)
18 January 1946 (as PRI)
Av. Insurgentes Norte 59 col. Buenavista 06359 Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City
Red Jóvenes x México
1,411,889[1]
Compromiso por México (2011–2015)
Todos por México (2017–2018)
Va por México (2020–2023)
Fuerza y Corazón por México (2023–)
The PNR was founded in 1929 by Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico's paramount leader at the time and self-proclaimed Jefe Máximo (Supreme Chief) of the Mexican Revolution. The party was created with the intent of providing a political space in which all the surviving leaders and combatants of the Mexican Revolution could participate to solve the severe political crisis caused by the assassination of president-elect Álvaro Obregón in 1928. Although Calles himself fell into political disgrace and was exiled in 1936, the party continued ruling Mexico until 2000, changing names twice until it became the PRI.
The PRI maintained absolute power over the country for most of the twentieth century; besides holding the Presidency of the Republic, all members of the Senate belonged to the PRI until 1976, and all state governors were also from the PRI until 1989. Throughout the seven decades that the PRI governed Mexico, the party used corporatism, co-option, electoral fraud, and political repression to hold power. In particular, the presidential elections of 1940, 1952 and 1988 were characterized by massive irregularities and fraudulent practices denounced by both domestic and international observers. While Mexico benefited from an economic boom which improved the quality of life of most people and created political stability during the early decades of the party's rule, issues such as inequality, corruption, and a lack of political freedoms cultivated growing opposition against the PRI, culminating in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in which the Mexican Army killed hundreds of unarmed student demonstrators in Mexico City. Subsequently, a series of economic crises beginning in the 1970s drastically lowered the living standards of much of the country's population.
Throughout its nine-decade existence, the party has represented a very wide array of ideologies, typically following from the policies of the President of the Republic. During the 1980s, the party moved towards the centre-right of the political spectrum, with policies including privatizing state-run companies, establishing closer relations with the Catholic Church, and embracing free-market capitalism.[15][16][17] Subsequently, many left-wing members of the party abandoned the PRI and founded the Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD) in 1989 following the controversial 1988 elections.
In 1990, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa famously described Mexico under the PRI as being "the perfect dictatorship", stating: "I don't believe that there has been in Latin America any case of a system of dictatorship which has so efficiently recruited the intellectual milieu, bribing it with great subtlety. The perfect dictatorship is not communism, nor the USSR, nor Fidel Castro; the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship."[18][19] The phrase became popular in Mexico and around the world until the PRI fell from power in 2000.
Despite losing the presidency in the 2000 elections, and 2006 presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo finishing in third place without carrying a single state, the PRI continued to control most state governments through the 2000s and performed strongly at local levels. As a result, the PRI won the 2009 legislative election, and in 2012 its candidate Enrique Peña Nieto regained the presidency. However, dissatisfaction with corruption in Peña Nieto's administration, the escalation of the Mexican drug war, and rising crime led to PRI nominee José Antonio Meade losing the 2018 presidential election with the worst performance in the party's history.
PRI and Dominant-party state (1946–1988)[edit]
Change in structure and ideology[edit]
The party's name was changed in 1946, the final year of Manuel Ávila Camacho's term of office.[59] The sectoral representation in the party continued for the workers, peasants, and the popular sector, but the military was no longer represented by its own sector. The Mexican president was at the apex of the political system with the PRI. To reach the top of the government, as the candidate and then president of the republic, the path was only through membership and leadership in the party and government service. Within the party, there were factions, the técnicos, bureaucrats with specialized knowledge and training, especially with the economy, and políticos, the seasoned politicians, many of whom had regional roots in state politics.[60]
Miguel Alemán was the PRI's candidate in the 1946 elections, but he did not run unopposed. Alemán and his circle had hoped to abandon sectoral representation in the party and separate the party as an organism of the state, but there was considerable pushback from the labor sector and the CTM, which would have lost influence, along with the other sectors. The structure of the party remained sectoral, but the Alemanistas abandoned the goal that had been "the preparation of the people for the implementation of a workers' democracy and for the arrival of a socialist regime."[61] The party slogan was changed from the PRM's "[f]or a workers' democracy" (Por una democracia de trabajadores) to the PRI's "[d]emocracy and justice" (Democracia y justicia).
In practice after Cárdenas left office, the party became more centrist, and his more radical agrarian policies were abandoned.[62] With Lombardo Toledano's replacement as leader of the CTM, labor under the CTM's Fidel Velázquez became even more closely identified with the party. The more radical left of the labor movement, under Vicente Lombardo Toledano, split from the PRI, the Partido Popular. Although the party gave voice to workers' demands, since it was outside the umbrella of the PRI and lost power and influence.[63] The leadership of component unions became advocates of PRI policy at the expense of the rank and file in exchange for political backing from the party and financial benefits. These charro ("cowboy") unions turned out the labor vote at election time, a guaranteed base of support for the party. During prosperous years, CTM could argue for benefits of the rank-and-file, such as higher wages, networking to provide jobs for union loyalists, and job security. The principle of no-reelection did not apply to the CTM, so that the party loyalist Velázquez provided decades of continuity even as the presidency changed every six years.[64]
The PRI won every presidential election from 1929 to 1982, by well over 70 percent of the vote—margins that were usually obtained by massive electoral frauds. Toward the end of his term, the incumbent president in consultation with party leaders, selected the PRI's candidate in the next election in a procedure known as "the tap of the finger" (Spanish: el dedazo), which was integral in the continued success of the PRI towards the end of the 20th century. In essence, given the PRI's overwhelming dominance, and its control of the electoral apparatus, the president chose his successor. The PRI's dominance was near-absolute at all other levels as well. It held an overwhelming majority in the Chamber of Deputies, as well as every seat in the Senate and every state governorship.
The political stability and economic prosperity in the late 1940s and the 1950s benefited the party, so that in general Mexicans did not object to the lack of real democracy.
In popular culture[edit]
The 1999 film Herod's Law, directed by Luis Estrada, is a political satire of corruption in Mexico under the PRI regime. It was notably the first film to criticize the PRI explicitly by name[143] and carried some controversy and censorship attempts from the Mexican government because of it.
A latter Estrada film, The Perfect Dictatorship (2014), dealt with the political favoritism of Televisa towards the PRI, and the concept of the "cortinas de humo (smoke screens)" was explored in the Mexican black-comedy film, whose plot directly criticizes both the PRI and Televisa.[144] Taking place in a Mexico with a tightly controlled media landscape, the plot centers around a corrupt politician (a fictional stand-in for Enrique Peña Nieto) from a political party (serving as a fictional stand-in for the PRI), and how he makes a deal with TV MX (which serves as a stand-in to Televisa) to manipulate the diffusion of news towards his benefit, in order to save his political career.[145] The director made it based on the perceived media manipulation in Mexico.[146]