With many reservations, but encouraged by some acquaintances, I decided to watch the series. It is a production that leaves you with mixed thoughts. That is probably what the PRI reflects most on.
Visually, it must be recognized that the images are perfect. They definitely evoke the times of PRIism, in the different stages with which the series aims to analyze the timeline in which the decline of the once hegemonic party occurred. They definitely invoke some nostalgia.
Since the 70s, The Party, as it was known even when there were other parties, and even in its time of opposition, began to fail in its vision, its strategy and its direction. It could be argued that it was since the mid-60s, when he lost awareness of social reality.
The 80s were, at first, unstable due to the legacy of the previous decade. And in a second part, an apparent attempt to begin to recover capacity and relevance.
The late 80s and first half of the 90s are the years that many of us remember as a great revitalization. An unprecedented reinvention, in the midst of a political and social environment of great questions. To return to the crisis with Zedillo and his personal resentments.
The 2000s, for the first time in opposition, were a mix of major internal problems, with moments of brilliance for the personalities who were in key positions, within the party and in the legislative branch. Despite Roberto Madrazo, the PRI knew how to survive.
And particularly in the second PAN six-year term, the PRI forcefully recovered, and contrary to the doomsayers of its death, its status as a fundamental party for the political and social life of the country.
It was clear in those years that, beyond the profound errors of Calderonism, the PRI had experienced figures, with deep conviction, and great fang. Led by its President, Beatriz Paredes, the electoral recovery was undoubtedly based on ground work, reconnecting with society and with the bases.
In conjunction with the leadership from the Legislative Branch, particularly from the Senate with its Coordinator, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, control of the country’s political agenda was recovered, even above the Federal Government.
These were the leaderships that built the conditions for the return of the PRI in 2012. Peña Nieto had great popularity, but he would not have won the election without that history of partisan recovery, which gave him 12 million hard votes, of the 19 with which he won.
Unfortunately, the series remains in the superficial description, at times biased, of the historical eras it covers. Without greater depth.
It is not a series that gives context to everything that happened in the stages it covers. He does not make an objective analysis of what he tells. It does not go to the bottom of what was really happening in those complicated moments of the PRI, beyond what could be publicly seen.
The selection of interviewees is striking. Although there are some of high level and prestige, there are several who at the time were responsible for the weakening of the party, and who later have only dedicated themselves to making their grudges public.
It is also surprising that it does not address crucial moments. The imposition by Peña of Humberto Moreira as President of the PRI in 2011, which caused so much public discredit that he had to be removed a few months after appointing him in order not to risk the 2012 election.
The way in which, from the Pact for Mexico, Peña began to suffocate the PRI, and how in reality that Pact was the beginning of the fall of his government, long before Ayotzinapa, due to his corrupt negotiations. Although the hard-core supporters continue defending the Pact, due to their disconnection from reality.
The open operation by the Penyista government in favor of opposition candidates (PAN) for governors in 2015, and especially in 2016 to tarnish Beltrones’ presidency of the party.
Or the imposition of the external Enrique Ochoa as president of the PRI in the last stage of the peñismo, who was instructed to begin the burial process, which he did with great taste and arrogance, beginning the most visible process of emptying the party due to internal disagreements.
The series seems like a narrative based on the confirmation of preconceptions, rather than an exercise that truly seeks to understand the phenomenon that was the PRI, and the reasons why it weakened to its current agony.
