The Prd Its Origins Future And Position

The Prd Its Origins, Future, And Position In The New Order Of Mexico Essay, Research Paper

Mexico is unique in the realm of third world nations in the remarkable stability it has enjoyed in its government during the twentieth century. Whereas many nations have been embroiled in an oscillating process between military authoritarian rule and civilian semi-democracy Mexico has been marked by stable rule of the government with peaceful acts of succession. What is most unique about Mexico s government is that, while stable for over sixty years, it has not reached the level of a full democracy, instead it is a semi-democracy marked by a style of civilian authoritarian rule. This type of hollow democracy is a government and state ruled by one party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, in English the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The governing party is known more commonly by the acronym, PRI. The PRI has controlled the government and instituted a one-party state for over sixty years and had grown to control almost every aspect of the Mexican national, state, and local governments. Beginning, in the late 1980s and continuing throughout the 1990s, a gradual shift towards complete democratic government has begun in Mexico. New opposition parties have been formed, older opposition parties such as the PAN (Partido Accion Nacional or National Action Party) have gained a greater voice in government, and a single, coherent leftist party has formed from once divergent interest groups, the PRD. The PRD is known as the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica in Spanish, the Democratic Revolution Party in English. The PRD is most important because it represents one of the two parties that may in the future grow to challenge PRI hegemony and serve as an instrument to institute full democracy in Mexico.

From the early 1930s to as late as 1988, the PRI controlled all aspects of politics and opposition parties were severely limited in the scope of their participation of government. The PRI was guaranteed to win the elections, often by astronomically large majorities, in order to guarantee control of state and local governments as well as guarantee majorities in the Congress to rubberstamp the President s legislative agenda (Bruhn 40). A triangular entity was created to govern the country, the Presidency always controlled by the PRI that would direct and control policy, the PRI itself which would serve as an organization to provide a link between the state and the various classes of Mexican society the government would regulate, and the networks of patron-client relationships that would serve as the means of policy implementation collectively known as state corporatism (Bruhn 42). Through this system of government the state-party entity that was the PRI was able to incorporate diverse interests and classes – peasants, landowners, industrialists, and elitists – into a singular entity that would cooperate to guarantee stability and effective government for the Mexican people who had during the early twentieth century suffered through political instability and regional conflicts at the behest of local controlling warlords.

In order to understand the process by which the PRD was to emerge and the political issues its positions would ascribe to it is first necessary to analyze and comprehend the political and social climate that brought about active opposition to the PRI dominance of Mexico. For over thirty years, from 1940 into the 70s, the Mexican government under the direction of the President and the PRI was able to bring about consistent, outstanding economic growth, often a rate of 5% or more a year for GDP growth (Bruhn 57). The living standards of Mexican industrial laborers, urban managers, and some peasants grew at steady rates and Mexicans enjoyed a new era of prosperity and well being. Beginning in 1982, the economy suffered near collapse as the currency was devalued and the Mexican economy shrunk under strain from spiraling inflation and default on public debt. The old system of continuing government intervention in the economy, public ownership of industrial sectors, protectionist trade tactics such as high tariffs and encouragement of reliance on nationally produced products only, and strict control of labor unions while guaranteeing generous wage and benefit increases was discredited with this near economic collapse (Bruhn 56). As a result of this, large shares of the Mexican electorate blamed the PRI for the economic suffering and lost faith in continued support of its policies. Disenchanted voters numbers grew ever larger and the time was ripe for the emergence of opposition parties to take up their call and challenge the PRI s political hegemony, as the PRD would come to do.

Another important component of the social and political climate that led to the movement towards increased democracy in Mexico at the expense of PRI dominance is the increasing alienation of sectors of the Mexican populace that had been spawned from the rapid industrialization and economic miracle of the PRI. New classes of urban poor and middle class workers, as well as landed peasants in Mexico s rural areas, were not part of any popular organizations affiliated with the PRI hegemony and thus did not have any representatives in the government apparatus (Bruhn 60). These classes of people thus sought to form their own civic organizations to help each other and represent their interests.