Does Mexico Need a Revolution?

Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) scored another in its long series of election victories this July. In fact, during the 57 years that the party has ruled Mexico, not one of its candidates for president, governor, or senator, including no small number of prime rogues, has ever failed to win.

The party did lose a few mayors’ offices to the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) three years ago, but it took them all back in the latest sweep. Altogether the PRI has run up a winning streak that even its friends behind the Iron Curtain might envy. But now the theoreticians in the party’s nomenklatura are beginning to worry. Many of their fellow citizens have been saying for years that their record is too good to be honest. Now rank outsiders, among them the U.S. Government, are saying the same thing. The legitimacy of the system is being called into question.

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George Byram Lake

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Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) scored another in its long series of election victories this July. In fact, during the 57 years that the party has ruled Mexico, not one of its candidates for president, governor, or senator, including no small number of prime rogues, has ever failed to win.

The party did lose a few mayors’ offices to the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) three years ago, but it took them all back in the latest sweep. Altogether the PRI has run up a winning streak that even its friends behind the Iron Curtain might envy. But now the theoreticians in the party’s nomenklatura are beginning to worry. Many of their fellow citizens have been saying for years that their record is too good to be honest. Now rank outsiders, among them the U.S. Government, are saying the same thing. The legitimacy of the system is being called into question.