Mexico on the Brink

Few Mexicans are bold enough to believe that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) will lose many important offices in the general elections next July 6. Although Mexico is bogged down in a grim economic crisis, and the people are tired of inflation (177 per cent last year), of poverty, and of the appalling poverty-linked crime wave, most of them believe the official party will come up with plenty of votes to win.

The PRI’s built-in advantages are enormous. All three million of the nation’s bureaucrats—federal, state, and local—are PRI members. So too are the members of CTM, the official labor union, and the jobholders in hundreds of state-owned business concerns, to say nothing of the army of ejidata-rios (peasants) who work on government-owned lands.

GL

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George Byram Lake

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Mexico

Elections

Presidential Election

Few Mexicans are bold enough to believe that the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) will lose many important offices in the general elections next July 6. Although Mexico is bogged down in a grim economic crisis, and the people are tired of inflation (177 per cent last year), of poverty, and of the appalling poverty-linked crime wave, most of them believe the official party will come up with plenty of votes to win.

The PRI’s built-in advantages are enormous. All three million of the nation’s bureaucrats—federal, state, and local—are PRI members. So too are the members of CTM, the official labor union, and the jobholders in hundreds of state-owned business concerns, to say nothing of the army of ejidata-rios (peasants) who work on government-owned lands.