One party has governed Mexico's biggest state for a century. It looks as if that is about to change
For nearly a century, one party has governed Mexico's most populous state.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, dominated political life in Mexico for decades by rigging elections, buying off labor unions and suppressing dissent. Even after its nationwide monopoly was broken in 2000, the party maintained a tight grip on power here in the state of Mexico.
But in gubernatorial elections Sunday, what was long seen as unthinkable is now widely expected: The party will lose one of its last strongholds.
"The extinction of the PRI," as the Mexican media have been putting it, seems in some ways the inevitable result of its long history of corruption and the self-enrichment of its leaders.
Multiple former PRI governors in other parts of the country have been convicted of graft in recent years, and a news last week implicated the current governor of the state of Mexico in a $300-million embezzlement scheme.
