Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is one of the strongest political parties in Mexico. It has controlled the government for longer than any other party. It held power under several names from 1929 to 2000. During that period, Mexico’s poor and less-educated people often depended on the PRI for government aid. The PRI claims to stand for the goals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The revolution sought economic and social reforms, such as the distribution of land to landless peasants.
A national executive committee governs the PRI. The committee has representatives from three sectors: (1) agricultural; (2) popular, which represents mainly government workers, middle-class business people, and small landowners; and (3) labor. Traditionally, the committee and the president nominated political candidates. They had much power in determining political leaders within an essentially one-party system. In 1999, however, the PRI held its first primary election to choose its candidate for president of Mexico.
The PRI traces its history to 1929, when Plutarco Elías Calles established the National Revolutionary Party (PRN). Calles had been Mexico’s president from 1924 to 1928. In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas transformed the PRN into the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). The PRM attracted a broader base of supporters. In 1946, under Cárdenas’s successor, Manuel Ávila Camacho, the PRM was renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
In 1997, the PRI lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies for the first time. In 2000, electoral reforms and widespread public distrust of the PRI helped the opposing National Action Party (PAN) win the presidential election.
The PRI made a political comeback in 2012, when PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto was elected president. Peña Nieto served as president until 2018.
