Not even a tropical storm and flooded streets could dampen the fiesta in Mexico State, which lies in the south-central part of the country, by the nation’s former ruling party. Oblivious to the pelting rain, revelers dressed in the red of the Institutional Revolutionary Party danced into Monday morning among balloons, banners and the beat of tropical music. “Yes, we could do it,” they screamed, echoing a chant normally used in Mexican soccer stadiums. The PRI has plenty to celebrate. Its candidate Eruviel Avila won the July 3 election for governor in the most populous state in the country by a margin of more than 40 percentage points, according to preliminary counts. It also comfortably won the Pacific state of Nayarit, and Coahuila, which borders Texas.
Such soaring victories are reminiscent of the past century, when the PRI held the Mexican presidency for 71 years straight until 2000. As the red-clad partiers celebrated into the wee hours, they shouted that the PRI will retake the presidency next July, when Mexicans are scheduled to vote for the top job. Mexico State, which is made up of the slums of Mexico City, luxury suburbs and indigenous villages, is considered a microcosm of the nation. Its elections are said to be a laboratory for the national political strategies. Indeed, the PRI, the party whose government was dubbed “the perfect dictatorship” by Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, may be back.
Of course, a year is a long time in politics. The PRI also won the governorship of Mexico State back in 2005, only to come third in the 2006 presidential race. But there are factors that show the latest triumph is a much more serious signal. The PRI achieved its crushing victory while the other two major parties hardly showed up. Incumbent President Felipe Caldern’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN, had originally considered an alliance with leftists to stop the PRI resurgence. But the deal was done in by hard-liners on both sides. PAN’s gubernatorial candidate Luis Felipe Bravo Mena campaigned very much alone while the big hitters of his party stayed away. He finished with a paltry 12%, according to the early count. The candidate of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, Alejandro Encinas, had a disappointing day too, polling 21%. The PRI’s Avila ran away with 62 points.
The PRI also successfully staged a makeover with the victory of the youthful Avila, 41, whose telegenic clean-shaven appearance won younger voters when set against Encinas and Bravo, both bearded and in their late 50s. Avila succeeds the man who is now the most promising presidential candidate: outgoing governor Enrique Pea Nieto, 44, who has Hollywood looks and a soap-opera-star wife, Anglica Rivera, to match. Pea Nieto leads opinion polls for the 2012 presidency and received a major boost from Sunday’s landslide with the election of his anointed candidate. The youth vote is particularly important for the PRI because the party has long been characterized as a dinosaur from an antiquated authoritarian era. But polls from Mexico State showed that its support among first-time voters was even higher than among voters overall.
Critics retort that the dinosaur has simply put on makeup. While being fresher and better looking then the PRI barons of old, many fear that the young turks are just as authoritarian. The losing candidates in Mexico State accused the PRI of electoral shenanigans, including buying votes with free lunches, T-shirts and envelopes stuffed with cash. “I do not know of any democratic country in the world where the elections can be won by 40 points,” Manuel Camacho Solis of Encinas’ campaign told TIME. “This election resembles the last Honduran election.”
