Two decades have passed since Luis Donaldo Colosio, then PRI\u2019s Presidential candidate, was assassinated during an electoral campaign event in Tijuana on March 23rd of 1994. The aforementioned party\u2019s leadership organized several acts to commemorate his memory, hailing Colosio as a figure that set a precedent in both Mexican politics as well as PRI\u2019s inner structure. Beyond entering a discussion about an individual who was also happened to be one of the most influential contemporary politicians, the time seems right to reflect upon how much PRI has changed since then.
\nWhile delivering a speech about the twentieth anniversary of Colosio\u2019s death, C\u00e9sar Camacho \u2013 who, by the way, was one of the former\u2019s predecessors as PRI leader \u2013 wanted to mark the legacy of the deceased as the beginning of a radical change in the ways and means of the so-called \u201cnew PRI\u201d. Nevertheless, the return of this party to power didn\u2019t occur due to a popular acknowledgement of a democratic and self-critical approach but, in the best of cases, because of the image it projected as an experimented political group which could handle Mexico\u2019s governance \u2013 lest we forget, with a collective oblivion \u2013 and also, adding the backlash against PAN, the latter\u2019s mistakes while in office as well as its incapacity to effectively communicate its achievements. Now that it has reached power, PRI has sought to build a renewed foundation myth, one in which Colosio plays a key role in purifying.
\nIt is clear that PRI has put an effort in presenting a different image that will differentiate itself from past mistakes of the so-called \u201cperfect dictatorship\u201d, Colosio being the first link on a chain of events that will embody a \u201cmodernizing\u201d and \u201creforming\u201d party. PRI attempts to believe the idea that, had the deceased candidate arrived at the Presidency, the party would have radically changed its ways to transform itself in favor of democracy. Given the fact that this is a counter-factual event, which by definition is impossible to assess, it will be better to make an analysis that is based on reality. Lucky enough for PRI, rules of the political scenario did not suffer any radical changes during PAN\u2019s interregnum; this can be explained to the latter\u2019s lack of experience and will. As time went by, PAN was left in an unsuitable position within government and PRI was getting closer to its long desired journey \u201cback home\u201d. Thus, if PRI has changed, it cannot be attributed to a prodigious continuum but to the the traumatic event of losing power, the natural habitat within a political system created, nurtured and, at the time, worn out by the party that occupied the Presidency for over seven decades.
\nThe argument of having the manners within a political system unaltered rather than \u201cdemocratized\u201d, that is to say, that all political parties have exercised (tried) power (as well as its pros and cons) should be changed with the following question: has PRI found the need to change? In order to provide an answer, it is essential to take into account a key factor that is widely linked with politics: the social environment. Undoubtedly, society has obtained a more active role in decision-making, though it is still at a preliminary stage. That way, PRI has found \u2013 though it is still not keen on recognizing or accepting \u2013 a different environment than the one that existed fifteen years ago, when it was on the verge of losing the Presidency. It is undeniable. Regardless, the experience of its first months in this new phase in power has come to show tendencies such as reestablishing a centralized control over several stakeholders \u2013 Governors, Congressmen, opposition parties, business interests \u2013 using the allocation of resources, discretion of controlling hot-button areas, and discretionary approach towards justice procurement (as it was shown with the pragmatic actions undertaken with the Elba Esther Gordillo apprehension), among others. There is indeed a different social environment but practices from the past are still kept thus, the \u201cchange\u201d within PRI appears to be the restoration of one of the traits that kept the party in power for such a long time: its ability to adapt. In the end, as it always occurs in history, Colosio will end up being nothing more than a convenient legitimacy tool.<\/p>\n
CIDAC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two decades have passed since Luis Donaldo Colosio, then PRI\u2019s Presidential candidate, was assassinated during an electoral campaign event in Tijuana on March 23rd of 1994. The aforementioned party\u2019s leadership organized several acts to commemorate his memory, hailing Colosio as a figure that set a precedent in both Mexican politics as well as PRI\u2019s inner structure. Beyond entering a discussion about an individual who was also happened to be one of the most influential contemporary politicians, the time seems right to reflect upon how much PRI has changed since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-3536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-political-analysis","tag-political-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4225,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions\/4225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cidacmx.org\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}