ABSTRACT
The Mexican left in 2006 in many ways still bears the scars of its peculiar childhood as the bastard offspring of the Mexican Revolution, raised in the shadow of its legitimate heir, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI). Its current incarnation, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD), is the convergence of three strands of leftist organization, all profoundly influenced by interaction with that extraordinary hegemonic party which governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000. Despite the best efforts of many of its members, the PRD has been dominated by populist caudillos in large part because of these circumstances, particularly its long exclusion from free elections, its isolation from mass organizations, and an intellectual heritage linked to one of Latin America’s great populist figures: Lázaro Cárdenas.
