The PRD: a motley group
of New Age Jacobins
Name of group: Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Headquarters: Mexico, D.F., Mexico. Other bastions are in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero, and Tabasco.
Founded: 1989, by a coalition of "ex"-communists, "ex"-terrorists, and social-democratic dissidents from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), controlled by former President, Luis Echeverría Alvarez (1970-76).
Locations of operations, areas active: Throughout Mexico, particularly in the central and southern states of Michoacán, Guerrero, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Mexico City.
Universities: National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Autonomous University of Puebla, Autonomous University of Guerrero, Agricultural University of Chapingo, Benito Juárez University of Oaxaca, and others.
Rural areas: depressed agricultural areas; among organizations of collective farmers (ejidatarios); in the country's primary indigenous zones.
Major terrorist actions: Rather than direct involvement in terrorism, the PRD serves as apologist for the terrorist actions of other allied groups, and is also frequently involved in violent confrontations with police and opposing political groups.
In 1988, in Tabasco, violent attacks on installations of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
In 1989, in Guerrero, provoked violent confrontations with police in the takeover of several mayoral offices, plus sit-ins and marches.
On Jan. 1, 1994, the PRD's armed wing, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), launched insurrection in Chiapas.
Throughout 1994, invasions of more than 1,000 farms in Chiapas, as part of the Zapatista strategy of "liberating" territory and declaring it to be "autonomous."
Throughout 1994, takeovers of mayoral offices and confrontations with militants of the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in Chiapas.
January 1995: violent confrontations with PRI militants in Villahermosa, Tabasco, to overthrow Governor-elect Roberto Madrazo Pintado.
June 1995: shootout with state police, in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero.
Aug. 6, 1995: takeover of mayor's office in Tepoztlán, Morelos.
Oct. 2, 1995: burning of six buses at the Plaza de la Constitución (Zócalo) in Mexico City.
Trademark terror signatures: The PRD presents itself as the "defender of human rights" of terrorists and promoter of their cause, without taking direct responsibility for terrorist actions. From 1988 to 1991 in Mexico City, it organized a coalition of terrorists and proto-terrorist groups, such as the Neighborhood Assembly, the Francisco Villa Urban Popular Movement, the (now-defunct) Urban Route 100 Transportation Workers Union, the National Education Workers Coordinator (CENTE), and the University Student Council (CEU) of the UNAM, among others. Mexico City Mayor Manuel Camacho Solís coordinated all of these.
Leaders' names and aliases: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solorzano, Presidential candidate in 1988 and 1994; Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, PRD president.
Groups allied nationally or internationally: The PRD is the political and electoral arm of the narco-terrorist, indigenist, and ecological groups associated with the EZLN (see EZLN profile).
Nationally: National Democratic Convention (CND); "El Barzón" National Union of Agricultural, Business, and Industrial Producers and Service Providers.
Internationally: founding member of the São Paulo Forum, and member of working group since 1991; Socialist International; Cuban Communist Party; Inter-American Dialogue; National Endowment for Democracy (NED); Rainbow Coalition of the U.S. Democratic Party.
Religious/ideological/ethnic motivating ideology: Because its component groups are not united by any principle, the PRD represents an amalgam of different ideologies, bound together by their philosophical and political hostility to the Vatican.
Masonry: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's faction has historically been identified with the thinking of his father, the late President Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas: "Masonry [is] to act as citizens within socialist criteria, at the vanguard of Mexico's social movement." According to General Cárdenas's biographer, Luis Suárez, the general "at certain times stimulated ... the spread of Protestantism in order to free Mexican believers—without eliminating God—from dependence on the Vatican."
Theology of liberation: General Cárdenas developed a close relationship with the "red bishop" of Cuernavaca, Sergio Méndez Arceo, who introduced liberation theology to Mexico. In 1970, Cárdenas told Méndez Arceo: "If in converting itself, the church doesn't transform Mexico, we won't transform it, because we are too close to it."
Socialism: The "ex"-communists who joined the PRD had abjured "Marxism," proposing instead a "Mexican socialism," or "autochthonous socialism." Another strong faction, currently led by Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, identifies with the international social democracy, typified by Germany's Willy Brandt, Sweden's Olof Palme, and Spain's Felipe González.
Feminism and homosexuality: promoted by PRD leaders Ifigenia Martínez, Amalia García, and Laura Itzel Castillo, as well as by the Trotskyist faction led by Argentine Adolfo Gilly (Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's primary ideologue, and member of the editorial board of the São Paulo Forum's magazine América Libre), who advocates the "unification of new social movements" which seek "global rights" such as "the diversity of sexual options," "ethnic minorities," etc.
Indigenism: The PRD's statutes promote "indigenous autonomy."
Known controllers/mentors/theoreticians: former President Luis Echeverría Alvarez; Fidel Castro; Adolfo Gilly, Trotskyist intellectual and Zapatista; Pablo González Casanova, UNAM rector during the Echeverría administration (1970-76), member of the Zapatista National Democratic Convention, and on the editorial board of São Paulo Forum magazine, América Libre; Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas.
Current number of cadres: La Jornada correspondents who attended the PRD's national convention, Aug. 23-27, 1995 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, reported that "several hundred" attended. Other media reported the attendance of only 300 delegates from around the country.
Training: Most PRD activists with narco-terrorist backgrounds were trained in Moscow, North Korea, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.
Known drug connections/involvement: Leaders such as Ifigenia Martínez, Sen. Heberto Castillo, as well as Jorge Castañeda, the party's ideologue and international propagandist, have all advocated drug legalization. Journalist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's close ally, is also an important proponent of legalization.
Well-known PRD militants such as Mariclaire Acosta the Sánchez Aguilar brothers, Luis and Edmundo (who recently split from the PRD), receive funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), associated with Oliver North, whose ties to the drug trade have been documented.
Known arms suppliers/routes: See EZLN profile.
Known political supporters/advocates: former President Luis Echeverría Alvarez, (1970-76); associate of the Club of Rome; identified by many political figures as the architect of the 1968 student riots, organized from his position as government secretary under then-President, Gustavo Díaz Ordáz; presided over a known KGB front, the World Peace Council; promoter of the United Nations' one worldist policies; admirer of Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, whom he invited to Mexico while President (1970-76).
Manuel Camacho Solís, former mayor of the Federal District (1988-93), which post he used to bring multibillionaire speculator George Soros to Mexico; former foreign minister (December 1993-January 1994); former Chiapas peace commissioner (January-June, 1994); linked to former President Luis Echeverría; member of the United Nations' Commission for Global Governability; one of the primary promoters of ecologism in Mexico.
Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios, former head of the now-defunct Federal Security Directorate; former government undersecretary (1970-82); former director of the Federal Roads and Bridges Agency (1982-85); former governor of Veracruz (1985-88); former government secretary (1988-93); personal friend of Fidel Castro, whom he saw off on the vessel Granma, from Tuxpán, Veracruz, in 1958; his chief of advisers is the former Argentine Montonero leader, Abal Medina; self-proclaimed friend of all of Ibero-America's narco-terrorist groups and personalities.
Manlio Fabio Beltrones, former government undersecretary (1988-91); governor of Sonora (1991-); protégé of Gutiérrez Barrios.
Known funding: National Endowment for Democracy (NED); Mexican government funds allocated to registered political parties.
Thumbnail historical profile: In 1986, former President Luis Echeverría, controller of the PRI's masonic, social democratic faction, quietly created the "Democratic Current," which, under the rubric of democratizing the PRI, exerted pressure for Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solorzano to be named the party's Presidential candidate. Failing in this objective, Echeverría and his group decided that a group of the PRI's social democrats, led by Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Ifigenia Martínez, and later, in 1989, Rodolfo González Guevara, would leave the PRI (August-September 1987) to launch Cárdenas's Presidential candidacy, which was subsequently registered under the name of the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM). All of the registered and unregistered communist parties, as well as some disoriented nationalist groups, rallied around Cárdenas's candidacy, in the so-called National Democratic Front (FDN).
When this strategy failed (July-December 1988), part of the FDN abandoned Cárdenas; the other part, led by the Mexican Unified Socialist Party (PSUM, formerly the Mexican Communist Party, PCM), and the Mexican Workers' Party (PMT), decided in 1989 to create the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), with a simple change of name as a registered party, from the PSUM to the PRD.
The PRD was thus made up of a coalition of communist political fiefdoms, the most important of which were:
- The ex-PRI, social democratic, Echeverristas: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Ifigenia Martínez, Rodolfo González Guevara. The latter, according to his own statements, comes out of the Comintern's "Bukharinite" faction of the 1920s.
- The entire leadership of the former Mexican Communist Party, led by Pablo Gómez, Arnoldo Martínez Verdugo, Valentín Campa, Danzos Palomino, and others.
- A faction of the old Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers' Party (PRT), led by Adolfo Gilly and Rosario Ibarra de Piedra.
- Former members of the narco-terrorist Revolutionary Armed Movement (MAR), September 23 Communist League (LC23S), the guerrilla movement of Lucio Cabañas and Genaro Vázquez, etc., led by Rosalbina Garavito (former LC23S), formerly a leader of the PRD's parliamentary fraction.
- Elements of liberation theology, headquartered at the Center for Social Communication (Cencos), run by José Alvarez Icasa.
- Entities directly dependent on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Inter-American Dialogue, such as the Social Democratic Party of Luis and Edmundo Sánchez Aguilar (recently split from the PRD), and Mariclaire Acosta, leader of the National Network of Civil Human Rights Organizations (see "Cárdenas, the Mexican Aristide," in EIR's Special Report Shining Path North Explodes in Mexico, January 1994).
Since Jan. 1, 1994, the PRD has led the defense of the EZLN's "human rights" and is currently its electoral arm. For example, in the August 1994 gubernatorial campaign in Chiapas, the EZLN's candidate, Amado Avendaño, ran on the PRD's ticket. The same thing happened with the senatorial campaign of Irma Serrano, the satanic cabaret performer and promoter of the EZLN internationally.
During the PRD's most recent national convention, in August 1994, the majority voted against Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas's strategy of overthrowing President Ernesto Zedillo and installing a "national salvation government," instead backing Porfirio Muñoz Ledo's strategy of "negotiated democracy," otherwise known as dressing the wolf in sheep's clothing.
Historically speaking, the PRD's leadership, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in particular, identify with: 1) the nineteenth-century Mazzinian faction of Lord Palmerston's political zoo, within Benito Juárez's Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), and particularly with the anarchist, agrarian Ponciano Arriaga, known as los puros—"the pure ones"; 2) the anarcho-socialist, jacobin faction of the 1910 Mexican Revolution led by Ricardo Flores Magón; with the jacobins of the 1917 Constituent Assembly, who elaborated all of the anticlerical and collectivist agrarian laws of the 1917 Constitution; and with the father of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas, President from 1934-40.
