Mexico Nixes Russia Sanctions To Keep 'Good Relations', Whines About RT Being 'Censored'

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

35. Mexico had 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the (ostensibly) democratically elected PRI.

Instead of electing a government of, by, and for the people, they repeatedly elected a government of corrupt oligarchs.

I lived in Mexico for many years, and still lease the same house down there.

The slogan of the PRI years:

"The perfect dictatorship is not communism, nor the USSR, nor Fidel Castro; the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship."

Mexico can do bad all by themselves.

The PRI maintained absolute power over the country for most of the twentieth century: besides holding the Presidency of the Republic, until 1976 all members of the Senate belonged to the PRI, while all of the state governors were also from the PRI until 1989. Throughout the seven decades that the PRI governed Mexico, the party used a combination of corporatism, co-option and (at many times, violent) repression to hold power, while usually resorting to electoral fraud when these measures were not enough. In particular, the presidential elections of 1940, 1952 and 1988 were characterized by massive irregularities and fraudulent practices denounced by both domestic and international observers. While during the early decades of PRI rule Mexico benefited from an economic boom which improved the quality of life of most people and guaranteed political and social stability, issues such as inequality, corruption and the lack of democracy and political freedoms cultivated growing resentment against the PRI, culminating in the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in which the Army killed hundreds of unarmed student demonstrators. In addition, a series of economic crises beginning in the 1970s drastically lowered the living standards of the population.

Throughout its nine-decade existence, the party has featured a very wide array of ideologies (the one in use during any given period often determined by the President of the Republic at that time). During the 1980s the party went through reforms that shaped its current incarnation, with policies characterized as center-right, such as the privatization of state-run companies, closer relations with the Catholic Church, and embracing free-market capitalism.[12][13][14] 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.

In 1990, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa famously described Mexico under the PRI regime as being "the perfect dictatorship", stating: "I don't believe that there has been in Latin America any case of a system of dictatorship which has so efficiently recruited the intellectual milieu, bribing it with great subtlety. The perfect dictatorship is not communism, nor the USSR, nor Fidel Castro; the perfect dictatorship is Mexico. Because it is a camouflaged dictatorship."[16][17] The phrase became popular in Mexico and internationally, until the PRI fell from power in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Revolutionary_Party