Keys to Understanding Mexico: Challenges for the Ruling PRI

Publication Date: April 1987

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Esther Wilson Hannon

Research Area: Economics

Keywords: Latin American

Type: Report

Coverage: Mexico

Abstract:

Mexico faces mounting crises. Its economy is in shambles, and its $113 billion debt is the largest in Latin America. Even worse is its political crisis. At stake is the legitimacy of a political system forged in a violent ower struggle that has continued since 1910 among Mexico's controlling elite known as the "Revolutionary Family" or the Partido Revolucionario lnstitutional (PRI). The basis of PRI legitimacy, its claim to rule for all Mexicans, is being challenged by such important sectors of the country as the middle class, the independent Left, grass-roots organizations, prominent intellectuals, university students, and Catholic clergy of both the Left and the Right. They apparently have concluded that the system no longer works for them and fails to adapt to the material needs and democratic aspirations of a Mexican society much changed since the PRI consolidated control in the early post-Revolutionary period.