06/07/2011
There were independence day celebrations and debates over whether Kate Middleton’s sleeveless crepe dress was by Joseph or Erdem, so if a few Mexican gubernatorial elections flew under your radar last weekend—it’s understandable. But even for those with a passing interest, last Sunday’s results in the states of Coahuila, Nayarit, and Mexico (D.F.) have done a lot to clarify the hitherto murky race to Los Pinos.
Up until the year 2000, calling the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world a one-party state was nothing short of completely accurate. No, unlike the caudillos who had run and were running other Latin American countries—Stroessner, Pinochet, Castro, to name a few—there wasn’t one figure who dominated Mexican politics. There was a structure. And that structure, which eventually came to be known as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, enjoyed an uninterrupted 70 year dominance that lasted until that Vicente Fox victory.
Six years later, when Felipe Calderón won again for PAN (Partido Acción Nacional), it seemed as if the once invincible natural governing party had surrendered its role.
Lately, though, the tables are turning again.
Calderón’s fight fire with fire approach to the drug cartels has resulted in a few victories, but security is still the most pressing item on his agenda, and the war—as evidenced by the absurdly high murder rate—is certainly being lost.
That, many have thought, might just be the extra boost Mexico’s third party the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) has been longing for.
In 2006, the brashly leftish populist stylings of their leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, got them as close as ever to the presidency; Obrador even went as far as to claim he actually won.
As for the PRI, their candidate—Roberto Madrazo—finished a distant third.
But again, that was then, and this now, and as political vicissitudes brought the PRI back into the fold, the PRD made a peculiar decision.
Instead of allowing the PRI to win gubernatorial elections that polls showed them leading, they joined forces with their ideological opposites in PAN and decided that, regardless of those differences, anyone who wasn’t PRI was good enough.
Screw their unique visions for those states.
Whoever was leading the polls as of a certain date got to run with it—and they did.
The strategy worked—at least initially.
Though last summer’s elections showed the beginning of a resurgent PRI, the PAN-PRD alliance held on in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa.
Gustavo Madero, the PRD president, was defiant:
“2012 will be a completely different construction, a different agenda,” he said.
“At the local level, there are still states that need a shift in the balance of power, and that’s where alliances are fostered. It’s not opportunism, but rather democracy that’s been achieved in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa.”
If the election Mexico City is any indication, though, that strategy has ceased to be an option. Eruviel Ávila won with 64% of the vote on Sunday, and the man he's replacing, Enrique Peña Nieto, will leave office as the clear frontrunner for the presidency.
Coahuila and Nayarit were just the icing on the cake.
The PRI, once a giant, appears poised to become a giant again. And an opposition that sacrificed their respective politics for short term gains is paying the price.
