page_title: Institutional Revolutionary Party
section_title: Election of 1976, PRI runs unopposed
hierarchical_section_title: Institutional Revolutionary Party / PRI (1946–1988) / Election of 1976, PRI runs unopposed
caption_attribution_description: English: Nieuwe Mexicaanse president Jose Lopez Portillo kop
context_page_description: The Institutional Revolutionary Party 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, then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution and finally as the PRI beginning in 1946.
  The PNR was founded in 1929 by Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico's paramount leader at the time and self-proclaimed Jefe Máximo 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 severe 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 PRI.
  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.
context_section_description: In the 1976 election, the PRI presidential candidate José López Portillo faced no real opposition, not even the National Action Party, which did not field a candidate in this election due to an ideological split. The lack of the appearance of democracy in the national elections undermined the legitimacy of the system. He proposed a reform called Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales which gave official registry to opposition groups such as the Mexican Democratic Party and the Mexican Communist Party. This law also created positions in the lower chamber of congress for opposition parties through proportionality of votes, relative majority, uninominal and plurinominal. As a result, in 1979, the first independent (non-PRI) communist deputies were elected to the Congress of Mexico.  Within the PRI, party president Carlos Sansores pushed for what he called "transparent democracy", but the effort went nowhere.
  Although López Portillo's term started with economic difficulties, the discovery of significant oil reserves in Mexico allowed him to borrow funds from foreign banks to be repaid in dollars against future revenues to allocate funds for social spending immediately. The discovery of significant oil sites in Tabasco and Campeche helped the economy to recover and López Portillo promised to "administer the abundance." The development of the promising oil industry was financed through external debt which reached 59 billion dollars (compared to 25 billion during Echeverría). Oil production increased from 94,000 barrels per day (14,900 m³/d) at the beginning of his administration to 1,500,000 barrels per day (240,000 m³/d) at the end of his administration and Mexico became the fourth largest oil producer in the world. The price for a barrel of oil also increased from three dollars in 1970 to 35 dollars in 1981. The government attempted to develop heavy industry. However, waste became the rule as centralized resource allocation and distribution systems were accompanied by inefficiently located factories incurring high transport costs.
  Mexico increased its international presence during López Portillo: in addition to becoming the world's fourth oil exporter, Mexico restarted relations with the post Franco-Spain in 1977, allowed Pope John Paul II to visit Mexico, welcomed American president Jimmy Carter and broke relations with Somoza and supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front in its rebellion against the United States supported government. López Portillo also proposed the Plan Mundial de Energéticos in 1979 and summoned a North-South World Summit in Cancún in 1981 to seek solutions to social problems. In 1979, the PRI founded the COPPPAL, the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, an organization created "to defend democracy and all lawful political institutions and to support their development and improvement to strengthen the principle of self determination of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean".
  Social programs were also created through the Alliance for Production, Global Development Plan, el COPLAMAR, Mexican Nourishing System, to attain independence on food, to reform public administration. López Portillo also created the secretaries of Programming and Budgeting, Agriculture and Water Resources, Industrial Support, Fisheries and Human Settlements and Public Works. Mexico then obtained high economic growth, a recuperation of salaries and an increase in spending on education and infrastructure. This way, social and regional inequalities started to diminish. The attempted industrialization had not been responsive to consumer needs. Therefore, unprecedented urbanization and overcrowding followed and so, substandard pre-fabricated apartment blocs had to be built in large cities.
  All this prosperity ended when the over-supply of oil in early 1982 caused oil prices to plummet and severely damaged the national economy. Interest rates skyrocketed in 1981 and external debt reached 86 billion dollars and exchange rates went from 26 to 70 pesos per dol
caption: José López Portillo in 1976
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