The day the system fell

The PRI, a party that has ruled Mexico since 1929 was facing the biggest challenge of it's history. In the summer of 1988 there would be held presidential elections. The ruling party's candidate was Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was a brilliant economist, but lacked political experience. His adversary was Cuahutemoc Cardenas, former governor, and son of Lazaro Cardenas, ironically the man who consolidated the PRI as a state party. A year before, in 1987 the PRI was shaken to it's foundations, a group of powerful and known party members initiated a revolt to change the methods for the designation of the presidential candidate, traditionally chosen by the incumbent President, who, at the time was Miguel de la Madrid. The President decided to keep with the tradition and handpicked one of his aides (Salinas) as candidate. The traditionalist groups were more inclined to socialist politics were reluctant to follow with De la Madrid's liberalism, so they followed Cardenas who ran for the presidency backed by a coalition of small parties. There was a third candidate in the dispute, Manuel Clouthier, who ran as candidate of the PAN, a conservative party founded as a reaction to Lazaro Cardena's socialism. But Clouthier was a distant third in the polls. As the election day approached the public opinion was more and more interested, the rallies, for all the three candidates attracted more voters than ever. This was not new for the ruling party, accustomed to fill plazas with workers forced to assist by union leaders. The polls showed a close race between Cardenas and Salinas, even when the campaign budgets were very dissimilar, the same happened with the media coverage that gave hours and hours of prime time to Salinas, virtually ignoring Cardenas and Clouthier, despite this last candidate's efforts to get coverage. On the afternoon of the election day bad news were received at the PRI headquarters, the first result that arrived at the electoral commission showed a tendency favorable to Cardenas. Since the Minister of the interior, who was head of the electoral commission, promised to publish the results as soon as they arrived the public had already seen some of the results. Surprisingly, at midnight, the monitors that were showing the results were shut down, confusion reigned for some hours, in the morning the government said that the computer system that was receiving the results was down, with involuntary poetic justice the spokesman who gave this announcement said that the system fell. For several days the two opposition candidates stood outside the ministry of the interior, asking for the results of the election. When the computer system was up and running again the tide changed and showed a victory for Carlos Salinas de Gortari. There were massive protests, and some voices urged Cardenas to call for a popular revolt, he refused. Salinas became the 62nd President of the Mexican United States.

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