The Institutional Revolutionary Party (, , PRI) is a political party in Mexico that was founded in 1929 as the National Revolutionary Party (, PNR). It became the Party of the Mexican Revolution (, PRM) in 1938 and the PRI in 1946. The party held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years, from 1929 to 2000.
The PNR was founded in 1929 by Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico's paramount leader and self-proclaimed (Supreme Chief) of the Mexican Revolution. The party was created with the intent of providing a political space in which all the surviving leaders and combatants of the Mexican Revolution could participate to solve the severe political crisis caused by the assassination of president-elect Álvaro Obregón in 1928. Although Calles himself fell into political disgrace and was exiled in 1936, the party continued ruling Mexico until 2000, changing names twice until it became the PRI.
The PRI governed Mexico as a de-facto one-party state for the majority of the twentieth century. Not only were all presidents of Mexico members of the PRI, all members of the Senate belonged to the PRI until 1976, and all state governors were also from the party until 1989. Throughout the seven decades that the PRI governed Mexico, the party used corporatism, co-option, electoral fraud, and political repression to maintain political power. While Mexico benefited from an economic boom which improved the quality of life of most people and created political stability during the early decades of the party's rule, issues such as inequality, corruption, and a lack of political freedoms gave rise to growing opposition against the PRI. Amid the global climate of social unrest in 1968, dissidents, primarily students, protested during the Olympic Games held in Mexico City. Tensions escalated, culminating in the Tlatelolco massacre, in which the Mexican Army killed hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Mexico City. Subsequently, a series of economic crises beginning in the 1970s affected the living standards of much of the population.
Throughout its nine-decade existence, the party has represented a very wide array of ideologies, typically following from the policies of the country's president. Starting as a social democratic party during the Maximato, it moved leftward in the 1930s during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, and gradually shifted to the right starting from 1940 after Cárdenas left office and Manuel Ávila Camacho became president. PRI administrations controversially adopted neoliberal economic policies during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as during Enrique Peña Nieto's presidency (2012–2018). In 2024, the party formally renounced neoliberalism and rebranded itself as a "center-left" party.
In 1990, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa famously described Mexico under the PRI as being "the perfect dictatorship", stating: "I don't believe that there has been in Latin America any case of a system of dictatorship which has so efficiently recruited the intellectual milieu, bribing it with great subtlety. The perfect dictatorship is not communism, nor the USSR, nor Fidel Castro; the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship." The phrase became popular in Mexico and around the world until the PRI fell from power in 2000.
Despite losing the presidency in the 2000 elections, and 2006 presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo finishing in third place without carrying a single state, the PRI continued to control most state governments through the 2000s and performed strongly at local levels. As a result, the PRI won the 2009 legislative election, and in 2012 its candidate Enrique Peña Nieto regained the presidency. However, dissatisfaction with the Peña Nieto administration led to the PRI's defeat in the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections with the worst performances in the party's history.
Overview Profile
The adherents of the PRI are known in Mexico as priistas and the party is nicknamed El tricolor (the Tricolor) because of its use of the Mexican national colors of green, white and red as they appear on the Mexican flag.
Formed from an amalgamation of the various ideologies of the Constitutionalists, the party originated on the centre-left of the political spectrum. It experienced a sharp, leftward turn during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas who instituted extensive reforms, including the nationalization of Mexico's petroleum and telecommunication industries. Furthermore his administration carried out extensive land reform and oversaw the largest campaign of land expropriation in Latin American history. His successor Manuel Ávila Camacho, presided over a rightward shift that escalated in the 1980s. At the start of the decade, the party moved to the centre-right and later right pursuing policies such as privatizing state-run companies, establishing closer relations with the Catholic Church, and embracing free-market capitalism. Subsequently, many left-wing members of the party abandoned the PRI and founded the Party of the Democratic Revolution (, PRD) in 1989 following the controversial and fraudulent 1988 presidential election.
Some scholars characterise the PRI as a "state party" due to its dominance of domestic politics and the inextricable connection between the party and the identity of the Mexican nation-state for much of the 20th century.
According to Austin Bay, for more than seven decades, the PRI ran Mexico under an "autocratic, endemically corrupt, crony-ridden government". The elites of the PRI controlled the police and the judicial system, and were susceptible to bribery. During its time in power, the PRI became a symbol of corruption, repression, economic mismanagement, and electoral fraud; many educated Mexicans and urban dwellers in the 21st century worried that its return to power would lead to regression to its worst excesses.
The PRI became a full member of the Socialist International in 2003Decision of the Congress regarding Membership: XXII Congress of the Socialist International, São Paulo, 27–29 October 2003 – "Change of Status{:] To full membership[:] [...] Mexico: Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI" until its expulsion in 2025. It was also considered a social democratic party.
According to one PRI figure, following the party's defeat in the 2000 presidential election, "It's a party that began as leftist and little by little moved toward the center. We will continue to occupy the same space."The Daily Gazette 6 Jul 2000
Etymology The name "Institutional Revolutionary Party" appears as an oxymoron or paradox, as the term "revolution" may imply the destruction of institutions. According to Rubén Gallo, the concept of institutionalizing the revolution refers to the corporatist nature of the party; the PRI subsumed the "disruptive energy" of the Mexican Revolution by co-opting and incorporating its enemies into the party's bureaucratic régime.
Party practices There is a lexicon of terms used to describe people and practices of the PRI, that were fully operative until the 1990s. The most important was the , with the finger () of the president pointing to the next PRI candidate for the presidency, meaning the president choosing his successor. Right up to the moment the president considered optimal, several pre-candidates would attempt to demonstrate their loyalty to the President and their high competence in their respective positions, usually as prominent members of the cabinet. Until the 2000 election, the party had no direct input into the president's decision, although he could consult with constituencies. The president's decision was a closely-kept secret, even from the victor.
The (the unveiling), that is, the announcement of the president's choice, would occur at the PRI's National Assembly (which would typically take place in November of the year prior to the elections), with losing pre-candidates learning only then themselves.Garrido, Luis Javier, "Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)" in Encyclopedia of Mexico. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997, p. 1059. Once the occurred, in general the members of the PRI would demonstrate their enthusiasm for the candidate and their loyalty to the party, known as the . But the was also a delicate moment, for party unity depended on the losers acceding to the president's choice without public rancor or dissent. When President Miguel de la Madrid (in office: 1982 to 1988) chose Carlos Salinas de Gortari as the candidate in 1988, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo left the PRI to form a separate party, and Cárdenas challenged Salinas at the polls. The 1988 presidential election which followed is widely considered to have been fraudulent,Castañeda, Jorge G. Perpetuating Power: How Mexican Presidents Were Chosen. New York: The New Press 2000, p 74 and was confirmed as such by former president Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado and in an analysis by the American Political Science Review.
The term (alchemists) referred to PRI specialists in vote-rigging. To achieve a complete sweep of elections – the ("full car") – the party used the campaign mechanism of the ("hauling"), the practice of trucking PRI-supporters to rallies to cheer the candidate and to polling places to cast votes – in exchange for gifts of some kind.Preston, Julia and Samuel Dillon, Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2004, p. 56 The party would shift voting booths from one place to another, making it difficult for people to cast their votes.
Presidential succession before the party: 1920–1928
When it was founded in 1929, the party structure created a means to control political power and to perpetuate it with regular elections validating the party's choice. Before the party was founded, political parties were not generally the means in which to achieve the presidency. The creation of the party in the wake of the assassination of revolutionary general, former president, and in 1928 president-elect Alvaro Obregón had laid bare the problem of presidential succession with no institutional structures. Obregón was one of three revolutionary generals from Sonora, with Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta, who were important for the post-revolutionary history of Mexico. Their collective and then internecine struggles for power in the decade after the end of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution had a direct impact on the formation of the party in 1929.
In 1920, the Sonorans staged a coup against President Venustiano Carranza, the civilian First Chief of the Constitutionalist faction that had won the Mexican Revolution. Carranza had attempted to impose his own candidate for the presidency, Ignacio Bonillas. Bonillas had zero revolutionary credentials and no power base of his own, with the implication that Carranza intended to hold onto power after the end of his term. This would have been a violation of the no re-election principle of post-revolutionary Mexico, which had its origins in the 19th century. With the support of the revolutionary army, the Sonoran generals' Plan of Agua Prieta successfully challenged Carranza's attempt to perpetuate his power; Carranza was killed as he was fleeing the country. De la Huerta became interim president of Mexico and Obregón was elected president for a four-year term, 1920–1924.