Mexico: Return of the PRI

Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled Mexico for seventy-one years until they were voted out of office in 2000, accused of large scale corruption.

Twelve years later, the PRI is back in power after a victory by Enrique Pena Nieto in last Sunday’s presidential election. So what has changed?

The Mexican people have had twelve years of governance by the National Action Party (PAN). In those twelve years, Mexico has been caught in the grasp of an increasingly aggressive insurgency launched by drug cartels that the central government has failed in its’ efforts to defeat.

While there is unease at voting the party who ruled Mexico as a dictatorship for seventy years back into power, the PRI party has shown an unquestioned ability to govern.

The logical Mexican voter probably reasons “When the PRI was in power, I didn’t have to worry so much about being gunned down by a drug cartel.

I’m not sure that the PRI will be able to repeat its’ past success in the face of an increasingly aggressive drug cartel, but it will be interesting to see how the PRI deals with the drug cartels south of the border.

Mexico’s Drug-Free Election

The Mexican presidential election last Sunday passed largely without the violent influence of any of Mexico’s numerous drug cartels.

While some analysts have questioned whether the return of the PRI party to the presidency could mean a decrease in drug cartel violence. I think such thinking is rather shallow and simplistic.

Drug cartels have shown an amazingly perverse ability to adapt and invent new ways to conduct their trade, regardless of what the Mexican government has thrown into the countries war on drugs.

Why should we believe that people who were ingenious enough to have thousands of miles of underground tunnels constructed that led into the United States are suddenly going to be scared off by an acronym?

The more likely explanation was that Mexico’s drug cartels were acting strategically. Mexico’s drug cartels already had a sizeable hand in deciding this election.

 Previous administrations were judged for better or worse, by their failures in stemming the tide of drug related violence without Mexico. That failure plus the sluggish economy was more than enough to doom the incumbent party.

By not acting, the drug cartels were merely playing a waiting game that is likely to end with a violent crescendo.