Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM)

A national political party (1938–1946), the Party of the Mexican Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Mexicana—PRM) is the second antecedent of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico's official party. President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), partly in response to the strengthening control of his loyalists over the party, and in order to enhance their strength, dismantled its original predecessor, the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in the early months of 1938. The party took on basically a corporate structure, dividing itself into four sectors—popular, labor, agrarian, and military. The most controversial change engineered by Cárdenas was recognition of the military as a separate sector. His successor, General Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940–1946), eliminated the military sector, leaving the party with its basic tripartite structure. The popular sector, although smallest in affiliates, became the arena for the most successful political careers through the party ranks. The PRI went on to govern Mexico until 2000, when Vicente Fox of the Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) won in the presidential election. In 2006 the PRI fell to third place in the presidential race.

See alsoÁvila Camacho, Manuel; Cárdenas del Río, Lázaro; Fox Quesada, Vicente; Mexico, Political Parties: Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Robert E. Scott, Mexican Government in Transition, rev. ed. (1964).

Luis Javier Garrido, El partido de la revolución institucionalizada (1982), 5th ed. (1989).

Dale Story, The Mexican Ruling Party (1986).

Additional Bibliography

Alanís Enciso, Fernando Saúl. El gobierno del general Lazaro Cardenas, 1934–1940: Una visión revisionista. San Luis Potosí, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis, 2000.

Navarro, Aaron William. "Political Intelligence: Opposition, Parties, and the Military in Mexico, 1938–1954." Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2004.

                                           Roderic Ai Camp