III.

Postwar Crises and Growth of Opposition Parties

Mexico’s strong economy after World War II gave way to a series of economic and financial crises from the 1970s to the present. These economic problems severely undermined popular support for the PRI and encouraged the growth of opposition political parties. The PRI committed itself to major economic and political reforms in the 1980s. However, economic reform happened more quickly than political reform, which many within the PRI opposed.

Since the late 1970s, a growing conflict has developed within the PRI between the politicos (those who have risen through the party organization and have held political office) and the técnicos (those who have risen through the government bureaucracy and have little party experience). Since 1976 several técnicos with little PRI background have occupied the Mexican presidency.

In 1988 opposition candidates and parties seriously contested the presidential elections for the first time in Mexican history. The opposition candidate for president, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, was defeated by the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari, but many election observers believe that Cárdenas actually won the election and that the PRI stayed in power only through electoral fraud. Political and financial scandals surrounded the Salinas administration (1988-1994) and further undermined the status of the PRI.

The Zapatista rebellion that broke out in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in January 1994 increased pressure on the PRI. The Zapatista National Liberation Army demanded that the Mexican government institute numerous political reforms, including granting autonomy to communities of indigenous people in Chiapas.

The PRI’s 1994 election campaign was marred by tragedy. The party’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, was assassinated in March while campaigning in Tijuana. He was replaced as a candidate by his campaign manager, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, who was elected president with just over 50 percent of the vote. The two leading opposition parties—the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)—together won nearly half of the vote. The election attracted the highest percentage of registered voters in Mexico’s electoral history and reversed a persistent decline in voter turnout.

Criticism of the PRI increased after Raul Salinas de Gotari, the elder brother of Carlos Salinas, was arrested in March 1995 on charges of having ordered and paid for the 1994 assassination of his brother-in-law and deputy PRI leader José Francisco Ruiz Massieu. Later that month Mexican officials filed additional charges of “illicit enrichment” against Raul Salinas. Although former president Carlos Salinas was not implicated, revelations stemming from the investigation of his brother suggested widespread corruption during the Salinas administration, tarnishing the reputation of the former president. In January 1999 a Mexican court found Raul Salinas guilty of planning and ordering the assassination of Ruiz Massieu and gave him the maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.

In February 1996 Zapatista rebels and the Mexican government signed the first of a series of peace accords. The agreements proposed constitutional amendments that would give indigenous people adequate representation in Mexico’s congress and exempt them from a national law that candidates had to be a member of a political party to run in elections. The PRI had used the law to limit political participation in Chiapas.

The July 1997 elections resulted in major gains for the two opposition political parties. For the first time in its history, the PRI lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies; however, the PRI retained its majority in the upper house, the Senate. Opposition candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano easily won the race for mayor of Mexico City—previously an appointed position. During the 1990s the PRI also lost gubernatorial races in a number of Mexican states.