PRI (Mexico)

THROUGH ITS HISTORY, the PRI, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Party of the Institutional Revolution), has evolved from its revolutionary origins, with each six-year presidential administration taking on a character that ranges from left of center to centrist.

In February 1913—during the Mexican Revolution of 1910—the military “man on horseback,” General Victoriano Huerta, contrived in the murder of the duly elected President Francisco Madero. Reformist foment, which had aided Madero in ousting the aged strongman Porfirio Diaz in 1910, now rose up again to cast out the ruthless usurper Huerta. On March 26, 1913, one of the revolutionary jefes, or chiefs, Venustianzo Carranza, issued his Plan of Guadalupe, which promised (speciously) to carry out the progressive reforms for which Madero had gathered together his revolutionists in 1910. ...