The Old Guard in a New Mexico
How a Stronger Democracy Will Check the PRI
Article Summary and Author Biography
For decades, the PRI maintained control in Mexico by buying votes, co-opting the opposition, and wielding a repressive hand. Now the party could retake the presidency, but whether the PRI will return to its bad old ways is less important than the fact that Mexico's democratic institutions will hem in whoever is elected.
SHANNON K. O’NEIL is the Douglas Dillon Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She publishes a blog, Latin America’s Moment, on cfr.org. Follow her on Twitter @latintelligence.
Snapshot
There are now three candidates for Mexico's July 1 presidential election, but it is Josefina Vázquez Mota’s place on the ticket that has the potential to upend the future of the country's politics. Unlike her two challengers, who are linked to the old guard and old boys' network, as a woman Vázquez Mota can claim to be the mantle of change, even against her own party.
News & Events
Jorge G. Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico, and Shannon K. O'Neil, CFR senior fellow, discuss Mexico's President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto and the future of U.S.-Mexico relations.
The PRI's candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, campaigning in Mexico City. (Courtesy Reuters / Edgard Garrido)
After voting the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) out of Los Pinos, Mexico's presidential residence, twelve years ago, the country looks poised to bring it back. The PRI's candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, continues to lead the majority of electoral polls by double digits, making it increasingly unlikely that his rivals will catch up by the time polls open on July 1. The same goes for Mexico's congress. With every seat up for grabs, the PRI looks to make headway and perhaps gain a majority in both houses.
Political rivals and anxious commentators question whether a PRI victory will return Mexico to its less than democratic past. After all, for decades the PRI maintained control by buying votes, co-opting the opposition, and, at times, wielding a heavy repressive hand. Denise Dresser, a prominent Mexican political analyst, has written that the party "continues to be a club of corruption, a preserve of tightly linked political and business interests, a network woven together through the constant exchange of favors and positions, negotiated in the shadows." Meanwhile, an often repeated phrase sums up the view of a significant part of the Mexican population: "They may have been corrupt, but they knew how to govern."
For its part, Peña Nieto's campaign dismisses such concerns by arguing that the PRI today is made up of "a new generation of politicians, one that grew up in this democratic regime." In his stump speech, the candidate has repeatedly assured potential voters that he will not "reinstate the past that we overcame" and positions himself as the face of a new forward-looking political organization.
Whether the PRI set to take power is a new version of its old self is less important than the fact that Mexico's democratic institutions will hem in the next president, regardless of party or personal preferences...
