Institutional Revolutionary Party
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (, PRI) is a Mexican political party founded in 1929 that held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000, first as the National Revolutionary Party (, PNR), then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution (, PRM), and finally renaming itself as the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1946.
Institutional Revolutionary Party
The National Revolutionary Party was founded in 1929 by Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico's paramount leader at the time and self-proclaimed ""Jefe Máximo"" (Supreme Chief) of the Mexican Revolution. The party was created with the intent of providing a political space in which all the surviving leaders and combatants of the Mexican Revolution could participate, and to solve the grave political crisis caused by the assassination of president-elect Álvaro Obregón in 1928. Although Calles himself fell into political disgrace and was exiled in 1936, the party continued ruling Mexico until 2000, changing names twice until it became the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Throughout its nine-decade existence, the PRI has adopted a very wide array of ideologies (often determined by the President of the Republic in turn). In the 1980s, the party went through reforms that shaped its current incarnation, with policies characterized as centre-right, such as the privatization of State-run companies, closer relations with the Catholic church, and embracing free-market capitalism. At the same time, the left-wing members of the party abandoned the PRI and founded the Party of the Democratic Revolution ("Partido de la Revolución Democrática", PRD) in 1989.