PRI Begins its Ascent to Power as a Perplexed U.S. Looks for Formula to Bring Down Mexican Drug Syndicates

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) dominated Mexico’s politics with one-party rule for most of the 20th century, corrupting the country’s law enforcement and judiciary institutions. Today, President Felipe Calderón of the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN) is struggling to use the weakened institutions to combat Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). The human cost of fighting these DTOs has caused many Mexicans to lose all faith in the PAN and prompted a wave of support for the PRI. In an effort to slow the PRI’s momentum before the 2012 presidential elections, the PAN formed an alliance with a leftist party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The PAN-PRD alliance won three gubernatorial races in the 2010 elections, but the PAN and PRD are not sure if they will be able to govern together. The PRI’s leading presidential candidate is Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. If Peña Nieto is able to bring the PRI back to power, he will offer a strategy to eliminate DTOs that differs from that of Calderón. The importance of assisting Mexico in the fight against its drug syndicates means that U.S. policymakers must be prepared for a PRI president in 2012.

Elections Recap

COHA Research Associate, Katherine Haas, reported that many political experts predicted a clean sweep for the PRI in Mexico’s July 4, 2010 elections, which would pave the way for a PRI victory in the 2012 presidential elections. However, the election results demonstrated that a wave of anti-incumbency is sweeping the nation. No matter if it was PRI, PAN, or the leftist PRD, any state with a notoriously corrupt governor saw a change of the ruling party’s emblem. The PRI lost three states—Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa—to a candidate from the PAN-PRD alliance. Haas discusses the surprising nature of the alliance, given its opposing ideological views and the PAN’s contested victory in the 2006 presidential elections over PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

For full article click here

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate John L. Garcia