Национально-действенная партия Мексики: история и эволюция

Mexican political party

The National Action Party (lang es, PAN) is a conservative political party in Mexico founded in 1939. The party is one of the main political parties in Mexico, and since the 1980s has had success winning local, state, and national elections. In the historic 2000 Mexican general election, PAN candidate Vicente Fox was elected president, the first time in 71 years that the Mexican presidency was not held by the traditional ruling party, the PRI. Six years later, PAN candidate Felipe Calderón succeeded Fox following victory in the 2006 presidential election. In 2000–2012, PAN was the strongest party in both houses of the Congress of the Union (the federal legislature) but lacked a majority in either house. In the 2006 legislative elections, the party won 207 out of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 52 out of 128 Senators. In the 2012 legislative elections, PAN won 38 seats in the Senate and 114 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, but the party did not win the presidential election in 2012 or 2018. The members of this party are colloquially called Panistas. Notoriously, the two Presidents of the Republic elected as PAN candidates (Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón) have both left the party. Fox supported Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidates in 2012 and 2018, while Calderón founded his own party named "México Libre".

The National Action Party was founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morín, who had held a number of important government posts in the 1920s and 1930s. He saw the need for the creation of a permanent political party rather than an ephemeral organization to oppose the expansion of power by the post revolutionary Mexican state. When Gómez Morín was rector of UNAM between 1933 and 1935, the government attempted to impose socialist education. In defending academic freedom, Gómez Morín forged connections with individuals and groups that later came together in the foundation of the PAN in September 1939. The Jesuit student organization, Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos (UNEC), provided a well organized network of adherents who successfully fought the imposition of a particular ideological view by the state. Gómez Morín was not himself a militant Catholic, but he was a devout believer who rejected liberalism and individualism. In 1939, Gómez Morín and a significant number of UNEC's leadership came together to found the PAN. The PAN's first executive committee and committees on political action and doctrine also had former Catholic student activists, including Luis Calderón Vega, the father of Felipe Calderón, who became President of Mexico in 2006. The PAN's "Doctrine of National Action" was strongly influenced by Catholic social doctrine articulated in Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931) and rejected Marxist models of class warfare. The PAN originally brought together the Mexican socio economic elite opposed to President Lázaro Cárdenas' reforms. In particular, it opposed his plan for free secular education, the nationalization of oil and land reform. The party, which at the time included personalities sympathetic to fascism, campaigned for Mexico's neutrality during the Second World War. Efraín González Luna, a former member of the Mexican Catholic Student Union (Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos) (UNEC), a long time militant Catholic and practicing lawyer from Guadalajara, helped broker the party's informal alliance with the Catholic Church. However, the relationship between the PAN and the Catholic Church was not without tension. The party's founder Gómez Morín was leery of clerical oversight of the party, although its members were mainly urban Catholic professionals and businessmen. For its part, the Church hierarchy did not want to identify itself with a particular political party, since the Constitution of 1917 forbade it. In the 1950s, the PAN, which had been seen to be Catholic in its makeup, became more ideologically secular. A split in the PAN occurred in 1977, with the pro Catholic faction and the more secular wing splitting. The PAN had updated its positions following the Second Vatican Council, toward a greater affinity for the poor; however, more traditional Catholics were critical of that stance and nonreligious groups were also in opposition, since they wanted the party to be less explicitly Catholic and draw in more urban professionals and business groups, who would vote for a nonreligious opposition party. The conflict came to a head, and in 1977 the progressive Catholic wing left the party. The PAN had strength in Northern Mexico and its candidates had won elections earlier on, but these victories were small in comparison to those of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. In 1946, PAN members Miguel Ramírez Munguía (Tacámbaro, Michoacán), Juan Gutiérrez Lascurain (Federal District), Antonio L. Rodríguez (Nuevo León) and Aquiles Elorduy García (Aguascalientes) became the first four federal deputies from the opposition in post revolutionary Mexico. The following year, Manuel Torres Serranía from Quiroga, Michoacán became the party's first municipal president and Alfonso Hernández Sánchez (from Zamora, Michoacán) its first state deputy. In 1962, Rosario Alcalá (Aguascalientes) became the first female candidate for state governor and two years later Florentina Villalobos Chaparro (Parral, Chihuahua) became the first female federal deputy. In 1967, Norma Villarreal de Zambrano (San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León) became the first female municipal president. Until the 1980s, the PAN was a weak opposition party that was considered pro Catholic and pro business, but never garnered many votes. Its strength, however, was that it was pro democracy and pro rule of law, so that its political profile was in contrast to the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that was widely and increasingly seen as corrupt. The PAN came to be viewed as viable opposition party for a wider range of voters as it became more secular and as Mexicans increasingly moved to cities. As the PAN increasingly called for end of fraud in Mexican elections, it appealed to a wider range of people. In 1988, the newly created Assembly of Representatives of the Federal District had, for the first time, members of the PAN. In 1989, Ernesto Ruffo Appel (Baja California) became the first opposition governor. Two years later, his future successor in the Baja California government, Héctor Terán Terán, became the first federal senator from the PAN. From 1992 to 2000, PAN candidates won the elections for governorships in Guanajuato, Chihuahua, Jalisco, Querétaro, Nuevo León, Aguascalientes, Yucatán and Morelos.

The PAN has been linked to a conservative stance in Mexican politics since its inception, but the party does not consider itself a fundamentally conservative party. The party ideology, at least in principle, is that of "National Action" which rejects a fundamental adherence to left or right wing politics or policies, instead requiring the adoption of such policies as correspond to the problems faced by the nation at any given moment. Thus both right and left wing policies may be considered equally carefully in formulation of national policy. This theory of National Action politics, rejecting a fundamental adherence to right or left, is held within a strongly Christian context, and falls under the umbrella of Christian democracy. It was during Fox's term, however, that the "morning after" pill was legalized, even though the Church had condemned the use of these kind of pills, calling them "abortion pills". The PAN produced a television spot against state financed abortion, one that features popular comedian Chespirito (who was also featured on a TV spot promoting Vicente Fox in the 2000 presidential elections) and a second one that accuses the PRI and PRD of wanting to kill the unborn. After the abortion bill, which made abortion available, anonymous, and free or government paid, was approved at the local legislature, the PAN requested the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District (CDHDF) to enact actions on the unconstitutionality of the measure, the CDHDF rejected the request as it found no basis of unconstitutionality. After unsuccessfully appealing to unconstitutionality, the PAN declared that it may request the remotion of Emilio Álvarez Icaza, the president of the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District, for his lack of moral quality. The PAN, with the members of the Association of Catholic Lawyers, gathered signatures and turned them in to the Federal District Electoral Institute (IEDF) to void the abortion bill and force a referendum, which was also rejected by the IEDF. In May 2007, the PAN started a campaign to encourage rejections to perform abortion amongst doctors in the Federal District based on conscience.

The PAN has opposed measures to establish civil unions in Mexico City and Coahuila. On November 9, 2006, the government of the Federal District approved the first law establishing civil unions in Mexico. The members of the PAN, and a member of New Alliance were the only legislators that voted against it. The same year, the local legislature of Coahuila approved the law of civil unions to which the PAN also opposed. The PAN also lodged an unconstitutionality plea before the Supreme Court of Justice of the State of Coahuila, alleging that the constitution has vowed to protect the institution of the family. Guillermo Bustamente Manilla, a member of the PAN and the president of the National Parents Union (UNPF) is the father of Guillermo Bustamante Artasánchez, a law director of the Secretary of the Interior, Carlos Abascal, during Fox's presidency and worked in the Calderón administration against abortion and same sex civil unions. He called the latter as "anti natural." He has publicly asked voters not to cast votes for "abortionist" parties and those who are in favor of homosexual relationships.

Election year Candidate # votes % vote Result Note 1952 Efraín González Luna 285,555 7.8 Defeated 1958 Luis H. Álvarez 705,303 9.4 Defeated 1964 José González Torres 1,034,337 11.0 Defeated 1970 Efraín González Morfín 1,945,070 14.0 Defeated 1976 No Candidate Did not run 1982 Pablo Emilio Madero 3,700,045 16.4 Defeated 1988 Manuel Clouthier 3,208,584 16.8 Defeated 1994 Diego Fernández de Cevallos 9,146,841 25.9 Defeated 2000 Vicente Fox 15,989,636 42.5 Elected Coalition: Alianza por el Cambio 2006 Felipe Calderón 15,000,284 35.8 Elected 2012 Josefina Vázquez Mota 12,786,647 25.4 Defeated 2018 Ricardo Anaya 12,609,472 22.3 Defeated Coalition: Por México al Frente 2024 Xóchitl Gálvez Coalition: Fuerza y Corazón por México

Note: Only elections where the party won seats are listed.

Election year Constituency PR # of seats PositionPresidency Note votes % votes % 1946 51,312 2.2 Minority Miguel Alemán Valdés 1952 301,986 8.3 Minority Adolfo Ruiz Cortines 1958 749,519 10.2 Minority Adolfo López Mateos 1964 1,042,396 11.5 Minority Gustavo Díaz Ordaz 1970 1,893,289 14.2 Minority Luis Echeverría Álvarez 1976 1,358,403 9.0 Minority José López Portillo 1982 3,663,846 17.5 Minority Miguel de la Madrid 1988 3,276,824 18.0 Minority Carlos Salinas de Gortari 1994 8,664,834 25.8 8,833,468 25.8 Minority Ernesto Zedillo 1997 7,696,197 25.9 7,792,290 25.9 Minority Ernesto Zedillo 2000 14,212,032 38.2 14,321,975 38.3 Minority Vicente Fox Coalition: Alliance for Change 2003 8,189,699 30.7 8,219,649 30.7 Minority Vicente Fox 2006 13,753,633 33.4 13,845,121 33.4 Minority Felipe Calderón 2009 9,679,435 28.0 9,714,181 28.0 Minority Felipe Calderón 2012 12,895,902 25.9 12,971,363 25.9 Minority Enrique Peña Nieto 2015 8,346,846 22.06 8,379,270 22.06 Minority Enrique Peña Nieto 2018 697,595 1.25 10,096,588 17.93 Minority Andrés Manuel López Obrador Coalition: For Mexico to the Front2021 3,828,228 7.83 8,969,288 18.25 Minority Andrés Manuel López Obrador Coalition: Va por México

Election year Constituency PR # of seats PositionPresidency Note votes % votes % 1994 8,805,038 25.7 Minority Ernesto Zedillo 1997 7,880,966 26.1 Minority Ernesto Zedillo 2000 14,208,973 38.1 14,339,963 38.2 Minority Vicente Fox Coalition: Alliance for Change 2006 13,889,159 33.5 14,035,503 33.6 Minority Felipe Calderón 2012 13,126,478 26.3 13,245,088 26.3 Minority Enrique Peña Nieto 2018 600,4231.079,971,804 17.59 Minority Andrés Manuel López Obrador Coalition: For Mexico to the Front