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Mexico National Action Party
Founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morán, the National Action Party (Partido de Acción Nacional--PAN) was the first genuine opposition party to develop in Mexico. The PAN emerged as a conservative reaction against the nationalizations and land confiscations undertaken by the Cárdenas government during the 1930s. The PAN resembled a standard Christian Democratic party, and its early support derived primarily from the Roman Catholic Church, the business sector, and other groups alienated by the left-wing populist reforms of the Cárdenas government. Although the PAN is much more conservative than the PRI on social issues, since the mid-1980s the PAN's economic program has been almost indistinguishable from that of the PRI governments it has attempted to supplant.
The PAN has traditionally favored a limited role of the government in the economy, an orientation that has been adopted by the PRI during the past fifteen years under presidents de la Madrid, Salinas, and Zedillo. Historically, the PAN also has campaigned in favor of a breakup of the communal ejidos
into individually owned plots of land. In 1992 the Salinas administration introduced radical reforms to the land tenure law that allowed ejidatarios
to sell their plots and to consolidate their holdings (see Rural Society, ch. 2). This convergence of PRI and PAN economic programs encouraged the PAN congressional delegation to work closely with the Salinas administration to pass the government's sweeping economic reforms. In an effort to distance itself from the PRI, in the mid-1990s, the PAN has stressed issues such as the need for democratization, eradication of government corruption, and additional electoral reforms.
Traditionally, the PAN has had strong support in the country's wealthiest and most urbanized regions of the north and center, particularly in the Federal District, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Puebla, and Sonora. The effects of PAN victories in the northern part of the country since the 1980s are highly significant, particularly in the states of Baja California Norte, Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, and Sonora. The PAN has also displayed political strength in the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Yucatán. The PAN won the governorships and congressional majorities in Baja California Norte and Chihuahua during the Salinas administration, and the local congress in the state of Guanajuato gave a third governorship to the PAN after a state election had been plagued with irregularities. The PAN's major handicap has been its lack of appeal to urban labor and peasant groups.
The PAN has presented a candidate in every presidential race since 1946 with the exception of 1976, when its leadership could not reach consensus on a candidate. It has always been the main opposition to the PRI, although in the 1988 presidential election its presidential candidate, Manuel Clouthier, ran third to Salinas and Cárdenas. By 1992 the PAN controlled more than 100 municipal governments in addition to the three governorships. With Diego Fernández de Cevallos as its candidate and "por un México sin mentiras" ("for a Mexico without lies") as its campaign slogan, the PAN won a comfortable second place in the 1994 presidential race. The second-place win consolidated the PAN's role as the main opposition political force in the country.
Democratic Revolutionary Party
The Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Democrático--PRD), established in 1989, evolved from the National Democratic Front (Frente Democrático Nacional--FDN), under the leadership of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Cárdenas left the PRI in 1988 in protest over its choice of Salinas, a free-market reformer, as the PRI's presidential nominee. The PRD's party program emphasizes social welfare concerns and opposes most of the economic reforms implemented since the mid-1980s.
The PRD's agenda dates back to the populist and nationalist measures implemented by President Lázaro Cárdenas during the 1930s. The party promotes economic nationalism, as opposed to the structural neoliberal changes that focus on increasing trade and foreign investment to boost the Mexican economy introduced by the PRI during President de la Madrid's administration. Although the PRD holds a good part of the former communist and socialist parties' rank and file, the PRD is controlled by former PRI leaders. An estimated 70 percent of its leadership consists of former PRI members, while 30 percent consists of former members of the Mexican communist and socialist parties. The PRD president, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, served as president of the PRI during the sexenio
of Luis Echeverría Álvarez. The PRD opposed most of the constitutional amendments passed during the Salinas government, the most important being the ecclesiastical, agrarian, and electoral system reforms. Although the PRD is currently recognized as an opposition voice in the national debate, it remains in a distant third place in the electoral scenario. Toward the end of the 1994 presidential race, the left strongly criticized Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas for having lent qualified support to the broad principles of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of some state-owned companies. Despite these changes, Cárdenas and the PRD are committed to greater state control of the economy and propose the renegotiation of parts of NAFTA with the United States and Canada.
Data as of June 1996
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