The government of Mexico has, for the past 71 years, been controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has employed but one political agenda: to retain power at all costs. Therefore, Mexico has suffered; existing as a one-party, essentially authoritarian state under the transparent guise of federalism. Elections in Mexico, though held every six years, have been consistently rigged -- manipulated by way of ballot stuffing, bribery, coercion, intimidation, even murder. The time for change has come, and the people of Mexico appear to be seizing the day (Krauze, 1999, p. 18).
Mexico's governing body, fashioned in the style of federalism, has a President as well as a Congress, which is composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Functioning at the State level, Mexico holds local elections. Today, with the emergence of Vicente Fox and the PAN, true opposition has triumphed in Mexico for the first time in the better part of a century, and thus the people of Mexico may finally have an opportunity to enjoy the federalist system that has heretofore been no more than a ruse (Business Week, 2000, p. 38; Krauze, 1999, p. 18).
Mexico has never been a true democracy. On the contrary, men such as Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa have referred to Mexico's political system as "the perfect dictatorship"(Fuser, 1995, p. 15). And a dictatorship it has been. The PRI, since its inception in 1929 (under a different name) has obeyed one rule: to resolve conflicts of interest among the elite without bloodshed (Fuser, 1995, p. 15). As such, the PRI has earned the distinction of having become the longest-lasting authoritarian regime of the 20th century(The Nation, 2000, p. 3). The PRI's genius, explains The Economist, has been to "cultivate loyalty using repression only as a last resort. It diffused political dissent by permitting and even financing it"(2000, p. 25). Thus, for 71 years, there has been only one pol...