Institutional Revolutionary Party

The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a political party that has been highly influential in Mexico since its founding there in 1929. In Spanish, the political party is called Partido Revolucionario Institucional, usually abbreviated PRI. Since the time of its creation shortly after the Mexican Revolution, the PRI has produced the vast majority of Mexican presidents and major governmental leaders. The organization was originally called the National Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Nacional) and then renamed the Mexican Revolutionary Party (Partido de la Revolución Mexicana) before taking its final title. Although its power waned briefly around the turn of the twenty-first century, the PRI regained power in Mexico with the 2012 election of Enrique Peña Nieto as the country's president and many other party members into political offices at the national and local levels. The power of the party was in doubt as of early 2017, however, as many in Mexico were calling for the president to be removed from office. In 2018, the party's candidate place third in the presidential election. In the 2024 election, the party suffered several losses, winning only around 10 percent of the seats in both the house and the senate.

Brief History

The beginning of the twentieth century was a time of great change in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) ended dictatorship in Mexico but left the new political situation uncertain. Power was unevenly distributed among a wide range of leaders of labor, politics, military, and business. At the same time, Mexico was dealing with military and religious upheavals and conflicts with its powerful neighbor to the north, the United States.

It was in this troubled environment that former president Plutarco Elías Calles and his supporters founded a new political party, the National Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Nacional) on March 4, 1929. The party attempted to bring stability to Mexican politics. It allowed for a governmental party system, though Calles's party became entrenched, controlling the structure of the new government and dominating its leadership for generations to come.

In 1938, the National Revolutionary Party took the name Mexican Revolutionary Party. In 1946, it took its current name. The name changes signaled a reduced emphasis on the military aspect of the party and more emphasis on the public. The party nationalized the oil industry, attempted to increase education and literacy, and worked in some ways to give more power to formerly disenfranchised groups such as peasants, farmers, small business owners, and women.

These popular reforms won much support for the PRI, but the party had a darker side. Party leaders began a system of rewarding supporters and buying votes with the promise of special benefits, and some accused them of rigging elections. An intelligence agency called the Federal Security Directorate began seeking out dissenters among the people. Starting in the late 1960s, party-affiliated military and police forces began cracking down on dissent. In 1968 and 1971, Mexican soldiers killed student protestors.

Until the 1980s, the PRI appeared to be an all-powerful and unstoppable force in Mexican politics. No other party could even make a serious attempt to gain influence. By the mid-1980s, however, public distaste for many PRI policies brought sympathy for opposition parties. Some parties began to appear more prominently in subsequent elections in all levels of government as challengers to the entrenched PRI.

Overview

In modern Mexico, the PRI is still a major and arguably dominant force. However, it no longer carries the unquestioning support of the people. Opposition parties have struggled their way into political offices. Meanwhile, protestors make their grievances with the PRI heard, often in dramatic ways.

The waning of the PRI's power began in the late twentieth century. In 1988, an opposition candidate appeared to be at the forefront of the presidential race. However, the incumbent PRI claimed errors in the voting and declared its own candidate the winner. The following year an opposition candidate won a governor's race against a PRI candidate, marking one of the party's first and biggest losses at that time. The power of opposition parties increased further in the 1990s.

Mexico faced many struggles during this time, including rebellions among indigenous groups, assassinations of political leaders, and financial crises. Despite some attempts by PRI presidents to bring stability and reform, the situation became worse and the status of the party suffered greatly. By 1997, the party had lost its majority in the Mexican Congress. In 2000, it lost the presidency, for the first time since 1929, to Vicente Fox of the National Action Party.

The presidential monopoly of the PRI had been broken, and the party's fortunes plummeted in the early 2000s. By 2005, the party controlled only half of Mexican states and suffered a major presidential loss in 2006.

However, the downward trend began to reverse itself by the end of the decade. Opposition leaders failed to live up to the hopes of the people. Concerns over unemployment, drugs, and violent crime made many Mexicans reconsider the ouster of their former leaders. Suddenly PRI candidates were winning larger percentages again.

In 2009, the party regained dominance in Congress. In 2012, the party retook the presidency thanks to the successful campaign of candidate Enrique Peña Nieto; it also took many other seats in local, state, and national governments. For a brief time, many people celebrated the return of the PRI, though observers noted that the party had never truly been gone. Although many of its candidates lost their offices, the party's influence and legacy remained strongly ingrained in society.

However, the resurgence of the PRI has not brought harmony to Mexico. By 2016, thousands of Mexicans had protested the policies of Peña Nieto and his party over topics including gasoline prices, rising inflation, and foreign policies. Rising tension with the United States following Donald Trump's election to the presidency in November 2016 added to many Mexicans' concerns. Amid intensifying calls for Peña Nieto to resign, the future of the PRI remained uncertain.

The people of Mexico expressed their frustration in the next election, ousting the PRI from power and electing the populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in what was a landslide victory. By the 2024 election, the PRI’s power had dwindled completely, with the party only managing to win about 10 percent of the vote for congress and the house. The presidential candidate, Xochitl Galvez, only won one of Mexico’s 32 states, and by a very narrow margin. After the disappearance of power, the future of the party looks grim.

Bibliography

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