the PRI's control of the national legislature and of many state governments.1 Three years later, for the first time since the end of the Mexican Revolution, the PRI's continued hold on the Mexican Presidency seemed seriously in doubt. Cuauhtemac Cardenas, son of the revered President who had expropriated the foreign oil interests in the 1970s, broke away from the PRI and organized his own independent run for the Presidency.2 The PRI's annointed candidate, Salinas, was able to eke out a narrow victory only through extensive and high level electoral fraud.3
Several factors led to the progressive fraying of the PRI's position. The most fundamental of these was the decline in Mexico's standard of living, and its economic prospects. The decline was particularly painful coming as it did in the wake of the heady optimism of the 1970s. Mexico's national income ________
1Judith Gentleman, ed., Mexican Politics in Transition (Boulder: Westview, 1987), 27ff.
2Stephen D. Morris, Corruption and Politics in Contemporary Mexico
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