Mexico: López Obrador may lose control of PRD to "new left" faction

The NL or “Los Chuchos” (street dogs in southern Mexican and Central American nomenclature) seeks to replace the traditional economic populism of the PRD with what it describes as a more “modern” orientation to single-issue and identity politics—with the goal of forging stronger links to corporate interests and small businessmen at the expense of the party’s traditional base among the poor urban masses.

The PRD has its origins in a split within the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which held undisputed sway in Mexico from the 1920s through 2000. In 1988 Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas, bolted the party and mounted an independent presidential campaign against PRI candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari, an election Cárdenas likely lost due to fraud. The PRD was formed in 1989 by former PRI members, like Cárdenas and López Obrador, and the Mexican Socialist Party. The Mexican Socialist Party itself had been formed out of the dissolution of several Stalinist parties—including the Mexican Communist Party and the Worker’s Party.

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