title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The general economic prosperity served to legitimize PRI hegemony in the eyes of most Mexicans, and for decades the party faced no real opposition on any level of government. On the rare occasions when an opposition candidate, usually from the conservative National Action Party, whose strength was in Mexico's north, garnered a majority of votes in an election, the PRI often used its control of local government to rig election results in its favor. Voter apathy was characteristic in this period, with low turnout in elections. The PRI co-opted criticism by incorporating sectors of society into its hierarchy. PRI-controlled labor unions (""charro" unions") maintained a tight grip over the working classes; the PRI held rural farmers in check through its control of the "ejidos" (state-owned plots of land that peasants could farm but not own), and generous financial support of universities and the arts ensured that most intellectuals rarely challenged the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. In this way, PRI rule was supported by a broad national consensus that held firm for decades, even as polarizing forces gradually worked to divide the nation in preparation for the crises of the 1970s and 1980s. The consensus specifically held that Mexico would be capitalist in its economic model; that the masses of workers and peasants would be kept in check—as separate units and not allowed to merge into a single sector that would have too much strength; that the state and the party would be the agent for this control; and that the state and private entrepreneurs would compete in the mixed economy. So long as there was general prosperity, the system was stable economically and politically. Political balance meant that sectors had a voice within the party, but the party and the state were the arbiters of the system. Those supporting the system received material rewards that the state distributed. In this period, there was a continuing rapprochement with the United States, which built on their alliance in World War II. Although there was rhetoric about economic nationalism and defense of Mexican sovereignty, there was broad-based cooperation between the two countries.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Cracks appeared in the system. There was significant labor unrest with strikes by railway workers, electricians, and even medical doctors that were brutally suppressed. Culturally the mood was changing as well, with Carlos Fuentes publishing "The Death of Artemio Cruz" ("La Muerte de Artemio Cruz") in 1962, metaphorically the death of the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. The fictional Cruz had been a revolutionary soldier, corrupt politician, and businessman, now on his deathbed. Considered a landmark in Latin American literature, it highlighted aspects of Mexican history and its political system.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: When Alemán became president in 1946, the PRI had begun experiments in internal primaries, but Alemán cracked down on this democratic opening and had congress pass a law against parties holding primaries. Revolutionary general , president of the party, had been in favor of primaries, but Alemán's viewpoint prevailed and PRI candidates were chosen in closed party assemblies. Sánchez was replaced as titular head of the party, and the president of the republic remained firmly in control.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: During the early presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Carlos A. Madrazo was appointed president of the party and undertook serious reforms in 1964-65. PRI legislators were attempting to negate the principle of no-reelection for members of congress, which many of supported. Madrazo went further in reform attempts, seeking to democratize the electoral process for municipal candidates, which sectoral leaders and local PRI bossed opposed because it would undermine their hold on local elections. It was implemented in just seven states. Madrazo was forced to resign. Madrazo died in an airplane crash in 1969, which at the time was considered suspicious.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Only in 2000 did the PRI choose its presidential candidate through a primary, but its candidate Francisco Labastida lost that election.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The improvement of the economy had a disparate impact in different social sectors and discontent started growing within the middle class as well as the popular classes. The doctors' strike in 1965 was a manifestation of middle-class discontent. Seeking better wages and workplace conditions, doctors demanded redress from the government. Rather than give into such demands, President Díaz Ordaz sent in riot troops to suppress the strike with brute force and arrest leaders. Two hundred doctors were fired. Díaz Ordaz's hard line on this strike by a sector of the middle class presaged even harsher suppression during the summer of 1968.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: With the choice of capital for the venue for the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games slated for October, the government poured huge resources into preparing facilities. Mexico wanted to showcase its economic achievements and sought the international focus on the country. Maintaining an image of a prosperous and well-ordered Mexico was important for the Mexican government. In a relatively low-level conflict in late July 1968 between young people in Mexico City, the "Granadero" riot police used violence to tamp down the incident. However, the crackdown had the opposite effect, with students at the National University (UNAM) and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) putting aside their traditional rivalries and joining together in protest in the Mexican Student Movement.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: They protested lack of democracy and social justice in Mexico. Middle-class university students had largely been apolitical up until this point. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964–1970) ordered the army to occupy the university to suppress the mobilization and minimize the disruption of the Olympic Games. Orderly large-scale protests in downtown Mexico City showed the discontent of students and their largely middle-class supporters. As the opening ceremonies of the Olympics approached, the government sought help from the United States in dealing with the protests. Unaccustomed to this type of protest, the Mexican government made an unusual move by asking the United States for assistance, through LITEMPO, a spy-program to inform the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US to obtain information from Mexico. The CIA responded by sending military radios, weapons and ammunition. The LITEMPO had previously provided the Díaz Ordaz government with 1,000 rounds of .223 Remington ammunition in 1963.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: After weeks of huge and largely peaceful demonstrations in Mexico City in August and September by students and middle-class Mexicans, the government cracked down on October 2, with army and special tactical units opening fire on a relatively small demonstration in Tlatelolco, a section of the metropolis. They killed and wounded a large but unknown number of protesters. Despite that the Olympics went forward on schedule, with the president of the Olympic Committee declaring that the protests were against the Mexican government and not the Olympics themselves, so the games proceeded.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Political life in Mexico was changed that day. October 2, 1968, the date of what is known as the Tlatelolco massacre, is a turning point in Mexican history. That date "marks a psychological departure in which Mexicans -- particularly urban, well-educated citizens, intellectuals, and even government officials themselves--began to question the efficiency and morality of an authoritarian state that required violence against middle-class students to maintain its position of authority and legitimacy to govern." Intellectuals were alienated from the regime, after decades of cooperation with the government and receiving benefits for that service. The poet and essayist Octavio Paz, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Literature, resigned as Mexican Ambassador to India. Novelist Carlos Fuentes denounced the repression.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Díaz Ordaz chose Luis Echeverría as the PRI candidate in the 1970 election. As the Minister of the Interior, Echeverría was operationally responsible for the Tlatelolco massacre.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: By the early 1970s, fundamental issues were emerging in the industrial and agricultural sectors of Mexico's economy. Regional underdevelopment, technological shortages, lack of foreign competition, and uneven distribution of wealth led to chronic underproduction of investment and capital goods, putting the long-term future of Mexican industry in doubt. Meanwhile, ubiquitous poverty combined with a dearth of agricultural investment and infrastructure caused continuous migration from rural to urban areas; in 1971, Mexican agriculture was in such a state that the country had become a net importer of food. Overvaluation of the peso led to a decline in the tourism industry (which had previously compensated for failures in industry and agriculture) meant that by the early 1970s, the economy had begun to falter, and they believed the only sure source of capital was external borrowing.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Díaz Ordaz chose his government secretary, Luis Echeverría, to succeed him as president. Echeverría's administration (1970–76) increased social spending, through external debt, at a time when oil production and prices were surging. However, the growth of the economy came accompanied by inflation and then by a plummeting of oil prices and increases in interest rates. Investment started fleeing the country and the peso became overvalued, to prevent a devaluation and further fleeing of investments, the Bank of Mexico borrowed 360 million dollars from the Federal Reserve with the promise of stabilizing the economy. External debt reached the level of $25 billion. Unable to contain the fleeing of dollars, Echeverría allowed the peso to float for the first time on August 31, 1976, then again later and the peso lost half of its value. Echeverría designated José López Portillo, his Secretary of Finance, as his successor for the term 1976-82, hoping that the new administration would have a tighter control on inflation and to preserve political unity.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In the 1976 election, the PRI presidential candidate José López Portillo faced no real opposition, not even the National Action Party, which did not field a candidate in this election due to an ideological split. The lack of the appearance of democracy in the national elections undermined the legitimacy of the system. He proposed a reform called "Ley Federal de Organizaciones Políticas y Procesos Electorales" which gave official registry to opposition groups such as the Mexican Democratic Party and the Mexican Communist Party. This law also created positions in the lower chamber of congress for opposition parties through proportionality of votes, relative majority, uninominal and plurinominal. As a result, in 1979, the first independent (non-PRI) communist deputies were elected to the Congress of Mexico. Within the PRI, party president Carlos Sansores pushed for what he called "transparent democracy", but the effort went nowhere.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Although López Portillo's term started with economic difficulties, the discovery of significant oil reserves in Mexico allowed him to borrow funds from foreign banks to be repaid in dollars against future revenues to allocate funds for social spending immediately. The discovery of significant oil sites in Tabasco and Campeche helped the economy to recover and López Portillo promised to "administer the abundance." The development of the promising oil industry was financed through external debt which reached 59 billion dollars (compared to 25 billion during Echeverría). Oil production increased from at the beginning of his administration to at the end of his administration and Mexico became the fourth largest oil producer in the world. The price for a barrel of oil also increased from three dollars in 1970 to 35 dollars in 1981. The government attempted to develop heavy industry. However, waste became the rule as centralized resource allocation and distribution systems were accompanied by inefficiently located factories incurring high transport costs.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Mexico increased its international presence during López Portillo: in addition to becoming the world's fourth oil exporter, Mexico restarted relations with the post Franco-Spain in 1977, allowed Pope John Paul II to visit Mexico, welcomed U.S. president Jimmy Carter and broke relations with Somoza and supported the Sandinista National Liberation Front in its rebellion against the United States supported government. López Portillo also proposed the Plan Mundial de Energéticos in 1979 and summoned a North-South World Summit in Cancún in 1981 to seek solutions to social problems. In 1979, the PRI founded the COPPPAL, the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, an organization created "to defend democracy and all lawful political institutions and to support their development and improvement to strengthen the principle of self determination of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean".


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Social programs were also created through the Alliance for Production, Global Development Plan, el COPLAMAR, Mexican Nourishing System, to attain independence on food, to reform public administration. López Portillo also created the secretaries of Programming and Budgeting, Agriculture and Water Resources, Industrial Support, Fisheries and Human Settlements and Public Works. Mexico then obtained high economic growth, a recuperation of salaries and an increase in spending on education and infrastructure. This way, social and regional inequalities started to diminish. The attempted industrialization had not been responsive to consumer needs. Therefore, unprecedented urbanization and overcrowding followed and so, substandard pre-fabricated apartment blocs had to be built in large cities.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: All this prosperity ended when the over-supply of oil in early 1982 caused oil prices to plummet and severely damaged the national economy. Interest rates skyrocketed in 1981 and external debt reached 86 billion dollars and exchange rates went from 26 to 70 pesos per dollar and inflation of 100%. This situation became so desperate that Lopez Portillo ordered the suspension on payments of external debt and the nationalization of the banking industry in 1982 consistent with the Socialist goals of the PRI. Capital fled Mexico at a rate never seen before in history. The Mexican government provided subsidies to staple food products and rail travel; this diminished the consequences of the crises on the populace. Job growth stagnated and millions of people migrated North to escape the economic stagnation. López Portillo's reputation plummeted and his character became the butt of jokes from the press. In his last presidential address on September 1, 1982, he nationalized foreign banks. During his campaign, López Portillo promised to defend the peso "como un perro" ("like a dog"), López Portillo refused to devalue the currency saying "The president who devalues, devalues himself."


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: When López Portillo left office in December 1982, the economy was in shambles. He designated Miguel de la Madrid as the PRI candidate, the first of a series of economists to rule the country, a technocrat who turned his back on populist policies to implement neoliberal reforms, causing the number of state-owned industries to decline from 1155 to a mere 412. After the 1982 default, crisis lenders were unwilling to loan Mexico and this resulted in currency devaluations to finance spending. An earthquake in September 1985, in which his administration was criticised for its slow and clumsy reaction, added more woe to the problems. As a result of the crisis, black markets supplied by goods stolen from the public sector appeared. Galloping inflation continued to plague the country, hitting a record high in 1987 at 159.2%.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In 1986, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (former Governor of Michoacán and son of the former president of Mexico Lázaro Cárdenas) formed the "Democratic Current" (Spanish: "Corriente Democrática") of the PRI, which criticized the federal government for reducing spending on social programs to increase payments on foreign debt. The members of the Democratic Current were expelled from the party and formed the National Democratic Front (FDN, Spanish: "Frente Democrático Nacional") in 1987. The following year, the FDN elected Cárdenas as presidential candidate for the 1988 presidential election which was won by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, obtaining 50.89% of the votes (according to official figures) versus 32% of Cárdenas. The official results were delayed, with the Secretary of the Interior (until then, the organizer of elections) blaming it on a computer system failure. Cárdenas, who claimed to have won and claimed such computer failure was caused by a manipulation of the system to count votes. Manuel Clouthier of the National Action Party (PAN, ) also claimed to have won, although not as vocally.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Miguel de la Madrid, Mexico's president at the time of the 1988 election, admitted in 2004 that, on the evening of the election, he received news that Cárdenas was going to win by a majority, and that he and others rigged the election as a result.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Clouthier, Cárdenas and Rosario Ibarra de Piedra then complained before the building of the Secretary of the Interior. Clouthier and his followers then set up other protests, among them one at the Chamber of Deputies, demanding that the electoral packages be opened. In 1989, Clouthier presented an "alternative cabinet" (a British style Shadow Cabinet) with Diego Fernández de Cevallos, Jesús González Schmal, Fernando Canales Clariond, Francisco Villarreal Torres, Rogelio Sada Zambrano, María Elena Álvarez Bernal, Moisés Canales, Vicente Fox, Carlos Castillo Peraza and Luis Felipe Bravo Mena as cabinet members and Clouthier as cabinet coordinator. The purpose of this cabinet was to vigilate the actions of the government. Clouthier died next October in an accident with Javier Calvo, a federal deputy. The accident has been claimed by the PAN as a state assassination since then. That same year, the PRI lost its first state government with the election of Ernesto Ruffo Appel as governor of Baja California.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Luis Donaldo Colosio at the time party president attempted a "democratic experiment" to open up the party at the level of candidates for gubernatorial and municipal elections, which would bar precandidates from campaigning for the nomination, but without a democratic tradition within the party and as basic a fact as the lack of lists of party membership meant the experiment failed. Carlos Salinas de Gortari resisted any attempts to reform the party. At the end of 1994, after the assassination of Colosio who had been designated the PRI presidential candidate, the party did move toward greater internal democracy.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In 1990, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa called the government under the PRI "la dictadura perfecta" ("the perfect dictatorship"). Despite that perception, a major blow came with the assassination of the 1994 PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, the first high-level assassination since that of president-elect Alvaro Obregón in 1928, which led to Calles forming the PRN to deal with the political vacuum. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari designated Colosio's campaign director, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, as the new PRI candidate, who was subsequently elected. The 1994 elections were the first Mexican presidential election monitored by international observers.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: A number of factors, including the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, caused the PRI to lose its absolute majority in both chambers of the federal congress for the first time in 1997.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: After several decades in power the PRI had become a symbol of corruption and electoral fraud. The conservative National Action Party (PAN) became a stronger party after 1976 when it obtained the support from businessmen after recurring economic crises. Consequently, the PRI's left wing separated and formed its own party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in 1989.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Critics claim electoral fraud, with voter suppression and violence, was used when the political machine did not work and elections were just a ritual to simulate the appearance of a democracy. However, the three major parties now make the same claim against each other (PRD against Vicente Fox's PAN and PAN vs. López Obrador's PRD, and the PRI against the PAN at the local level and local elections such as the 2007 Yucatán state election). Two other PRI presidents Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas de Gortari privatized many outmoded industries, including banks and businesses, entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and also negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In the final decades of the PRI regime, the connections between the party and drug cartels became more evident, as the drug trade saw a massive increase, which worsened corruption in the party and at all spheres of Government. In 1984, journalist Manuel Buendía was murdered by agents of the Federal Security Directorate (Buendía had been investigating possible ties between Drug cartels, the CIA and the FSD itself). In 1997, general Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, who had been appointed by president Ernesto Zedillo as head of the Instituto Nacional de Combate a las Drogas, was arrested after it was discovered that he had been collaborating with the Juárez Cartel. In another infamous incident, Mario Villanueva, a member of the PRI and outgoing governor of Quintana Roo, was accused in 1999 of drug trafficking. When the evidence against him became strong enough to warrant an arrest, he disappeared from the public eye two days before the end of his term, being absent at the ceremony at which he was to hand the office over to his elected successor, Joaquín Hendricks Díaz. Villanueva remained a fugitive from justice for many months, until being captured and arrested in 2001.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Prior to the 2000 general elections, the PRI held its first primaries to elect the party's presidential candidate. The primary candidates, nicknamed "los cuatro fantásticos" (Spanish for "The Fantastic Four"), were:


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The favorites in the primaries were Labastida and Madrazo, and the latter initiated a campaign against the first, perceived as Zedillo's candidate since many former secretaries of the interior were chosen as candidates by the president. His campaign, produced by prominent publicist Carlos Alazraki, had the motto "Dale un Madrazo al dedazo" or "Give a Madrazo to the "dedazo"" with "madrazo" being an offensive slang term for a "strike" and "dedazo" a slang used to describe the unilaterally choosing of candidates by the president (literally "finger-strike").


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The growth of the PAN and PRD parties culminated in 2000, when the PAN won the presidency, and again in 2006 (won this time by the PAN with a small margin over the PRD.) Many prominent members of the PAN (Manuel Clouthier, Addy Joaquín Coldwell and Demetrio Sodi), most of the PRD (most notably all three Mexico City mayors Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Marcelo Ebrard), the PVEM (Jorge González Torres) and New Alliance (Roberto Campa) were once members of the PRI, including many presidential candidates from the opposition (Clouthier, López Obrador, Cárdenas, González Torres, Campa and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, among many others).


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In the presidential elections of July 2, 2000, its candidate Francisco Labastida Ochoa was defeated by Vicente Fox, after getting only 36.1% of the popular vote. It was to be the first Presidential electoral defeat of the PRI. In the senatorial elections of the same date, the party won with 38.1%, or 33 out of 128 seats in the Senate of Mexico.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: After much restructuring, the party was able to make a recovery, winning the greatest number of seats (5% short of a true majority) in Congress in 2003: at these elections, the party won 224 out of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, remaining as the largest single party in both the Chamber of Deputies and Senate. In the Federal District the PRI obtained only one borough mayorship "(jefe delegacional)" out of 16, and no first-past-the-post members of the city assembly. The PRI recouped some significant losses on the state level (most notably, the governorship of former PAN stronghold Nuevo León). On August 6, 2004, in two closely contested elections in Oaxaca and Tijuana, PRI candidates Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and Jorge Hank Rhon won the races for the governorship and municipal presidency respectively. The PAN had held control of the president's office of the municipality of Tijuana for 15 years. Six out of eight gubernatorial elections held during 2005 were won by the PRI: Quintana Roo, Hidalgo, Colima, Estado de México, Nayarit, and Coahuila. The PRI then controlled the states on the country's northern border with the US except for Baja California.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Later that year Roberto Madrazo, president of the PRI, left his post to seek a nomination as the party's candidate in the 2006 presidential election. According to the statutes, the presidency of the party would then go to Elba Esther Gordillo as party secretary. The rivalry between Madrazo and Gordillo caused Mariano Palacios Alcocer instead to become president of the party. After what was perceived an imposition of Madrazo as candidate a group was formed called "Unidad Democrática" (Spanish: "Democratic Unity"), although nicknamed "Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo" (Spanish: "Everybody United Against Madrazo" or "TUCOM") which was formed by governors and former state governors:


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Montiel won the right to run against Madrazo for the candidacy but withdrew when it was made public that he and his French wife owned large properties in Europe. Madrazo and Everardo Moreno contended in the primaries which was won by the first. Madrazo then represented the PRI and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico (PVEM) in the Alliance for Mexico coalition.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: During his campaign Madrazo declared that the PRI and PRD were "first cousins"; to this Emilio Chuayffet Chemor responded that if that were the case then Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), candidate of the PRD, would also be a first cousin and he might win the election.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: AMLO was by then the favorite in the polls, with many followers within the PRI. Madrazo, second at the polls, then released TV spots against AMLO with little success; his campaign was managed again by Alazraki. Felipe Calderón of the ruling PAN ran a more successful campaign, later surpassing Madrazo as the second favorite. Gordillo, also the teachers' union leader, resentful against Madrazo, helped a group of teachers constitute the New Alliance Party. Divisions within the party and a successful campaign of the PAN candidate caused Madrazo to fall to third place. The winner, as announced by the Federal Electoral Institute and evaluated by the Mexican Election Tribunal amidst a controversy, was Calderón. On November 20 that year, a group of young PRI politicians launched a movement that was set to reform and revolutionize the party. The PRI candidate failed to win a single state in the 2006 presidential election.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In the 2006 legislative elections the party won 106 out of 500 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 35 out of 128 Senators.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The PRI regained the governorship of Yucatán in 2007, and was the party with the most mayorships and state congresspeople in the elections in Yucatán (tying with the PAN in the number of deputies), Chihuahua, Durango, Aguascalientes, Veracruz, Chiapas and Oaxaca. The PRI obtained the most mayorships in Zacatecas and the second-most deputies in the congressional elections of Zacatecas and Baja California.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In 2009, the PRI regained plurality control of the Mexican congress; this was the first time the congress had fallen to PRI control since PAN's victory in 2000.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The PRI benefited from both the growing unpopularity of Felipe Calderón's administration as president due to the notorious increase in the homicide rate as a result of his war on drugs, as well as internal conflicts in the left-wing Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) that deteriorated its image.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Under Enrique Peña Nieto and after ruling for most of the past century in Mexico, the PRI returned to the presidency as it had brought hopes to those who gave the PRI another chance and fear to those who worry about the old PRI tactics of making deals with the cartels in exchange for relative peace. According to an article published by "The Economist" on June 23, 2012, part of the reason why Peña Nieto and the PRI were voted back to the presidency after a 12-year struggle lay in the disappointment of PAN rule. Buffeted by China's economic growth and the economic recession in the United States, the annual growth of Mexico's economy between 2000 and 2012 was 1.8%. Poverty grew worse, and without a ruling majority in Congress, the PAN presidents were unable to pass structural reforms, leaving monopolies and Mexico's educational system unchanged. In 2006, Felipe Calderón chose to make the battle against organized crime the centerpiece of his presidency. Nonetheless, with over 60,000 dead and a lack of any real progress, Mexican citizens became tired of a fight they had first supported, and not by majority. "The Economist" alleged that these signs were "not as bad as they look", since Mexico was more democratic, it contained a competitive export market, had a well-run economy despite the crisis, and there were tentative signs that the violence in the country may be plummeting. But if voters wanted the PRI back, "The Economist" claimed, it was because "the alternatives [were] weak". The magazine also alleged that Mexico's preferences should have gone left-wing, but the candidate that represented that movement – Andrés Manuel López Obrador – engaged in "disgraceful behaviour". The conservative candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, was deemed worthy but was considered by "The Economist" to have carried out a "shambolic campaign". Thus, Peña Nieto won by default, having been perceived (per the magazine) as the "least bad choice" for reform in Mexico.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: When the PRI lost the presidency in 2000, few expected that the "perfect dictatorship", a description coined by Mario Vargas Llosa, would return again in only 12 years. The Associated Press published an article in July 2012 noting that many immigrants living in the United States were worried about the PRI's return to power and that it could dissuade many from returning to their homeland. The vast majority of the 400,000 voters outside of Mexico voted against Peña Nieto, and said they were "shocked" that the PRI – which largely convinced them to leave Mexico – had returned. Voters who favored Peña Nieto, however, believed that the PRI "had changed" and that more jobs would be created under the new regime. Moreover, some U.S. officials were concerned that Peña Nieto's security strategy meant the return to the old and corrupt practices of the PRI regime, where the government made deals with and overlooked the cartels in exchange for peace. They worried that Mexico's drug war, which had already cost over 50,000 lives, would make Mexicans question on why they should "pay the price for a US drug habit". Peña Nieto denied, however, that his party would tolerate corruption, and stated he would not make deals with the cartels. In spite of Peña's words, a poll from September 20, 2016, revealed that 83% of Mexican citizens perceived the PRI as the most corrupt political party in Mexico.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: On November 27, 2017, José Antonio Meade announced he would compete in the 2018 presidential election, representing the PRI. He was reported to have been handpicked directly by president Peña Nieto through the traditional and now controversial practice known as "El Dedazo" (literally, "the big finger", evoking an image of the incumbent president directly pointing towards his successor).


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: There were concerns about the possibility of fraud in the presidential election following allegations of electoral fraud concerning the election of Enrique Peña Nieto's cousin Alfredo del Mazo Maza as governor of the state of Mexico, in December 2017. The Mexican newspaper "Regeneración", which is officially linked to the MORENA party, warned about the possibility of the PRI committing an electoral fraud. Cited was the controversial law of internal security that the PRI senators approved as the means to diminish the protests towards such electoral fraud. "Bloomberg News" also supported that possible outcome, with Tony Payan, director of the Houston's Mexico Center at Rice University's Baker Institute, suggesting that both vote buyouts and computer hackings were possible, citing the 1988 previous electoral fraud committed by the PRI. Bloomberg's article also suggested Meade could also receive unfair help from the over-budget amounts of money spent in publicity by incumbent president Enrique Peña Nieto (who also campaigned with the PRI). A December 2017 article in "The New York Times" reported Peña Nieto spending about US$2 billion on publicity during his first 5 years as president, the largest publicity budget ever spent by a Mexican president. Additionally, the article noted the concerns of news journalists, 68 percent of whom claimed to not believe they had enough freedom of speech. To support the statement, the cited award-winning news reporter Carmen Aristegui, who was controversially fired shortly after revealing the Mexican White House scandals concerning a conflict of interest regarding a house owned by Peña Nieto.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In April 2018, Forbes republished a British news program Channel 4 News story claiming the existence of proof of ties between the PRI and Cambridge Analytica, which was previously implicated in Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, suggesting a "modus operandi" in Mexico similar to the one in the United States. The information indicated they worked together at least until January 2018. An investigation was requested. The PRI has denied ever contracting Cambridge Analytica. "The New York Times" acquired the 57-page proposal of Cambridge Analytica's outlining a strategy of collaboration to benefit the PRI by hurting MORENA's candidate López Obrador. The political party rejected Cambridge Analytica's offer but paid the firm to not help the other candidates.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: In the 2018 general election, the PRI suffered a monumental legislative defeat, scoring the lowest number of seats in the party's history. Presidential candidate José Antonio Meade also only scored 16.4% of the votes, finishing in third place, while the party only managed to elect 42 deputies (down from 203 of 2015) and 14 senators (down from 61 in 2012). The PRI was also defeated in each of the 9 elections for state governor; the National Regeneration Movement won 4, PAN 3, and the Social Encounter Party and Citizens' Movement each with 1.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Amid the party's worsening electoral performance, it has attempted to redefine itself as a social democratic party since 2021.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: Due to weak law enforcement and weak political institutions, vote-buying and electoral fraud are a phenomenon that typically does not see any consequences. As a result of a pervasive, tainted electoral culture, vote buying is common among major political parties that they sometimes reference the phenomenon in their slogans, ""Toma lo que los demás dan, ¡pero vota Partido Acción Nacional!"" ()


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: The 1999 film Herod's Law, directed by Luis Estrada, is a political satire of corruption in Mexico under the PRI regime. It was notably the first film to criticize the PRI explicitly by name and carried some controversy and censorship attempts from the Mexican government because of it.


title: Institutional Revolutionary Party

text: A latter Estrada film, "The Perfect Dictatorship" (2014), dealt with the political favoritism of Televisa towards the PRI, and the concept of the "cortinas de humo (smoke screens)" was explored in the Mexican black-comedy film, whose plot directly criticizes both the PRI and Televisa. Taking place in a Mexico with a tightly controlled media landscape, the plot centers around a corrupt politician (a fictional stand-in for Enrique Peña Nieto) from a political party (serving as a fictional stand-in for the PRI), and how he makes a deal with TV MX (which serves as a stand-in to Televisa) to manipulate the diffusion of news towards his benefit, in order to save his political career. The director made it based on the perceived media manipulation in Mexico.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy (or autophagocytosis; from the Ancient Greek , , meaning "self-devouring" and , , meaning "hollow") is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-dependent regulated mechanism. It allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. Although initially characterized as a primordial degradation pathway induced to protect against starvation, it has become increasingly clear that autophagy also plays a major role in the homeostasis of non-starved cells. Defects in autophagy have been linked to various human diseases, including neurodegeneration and cancer, and interest in modulating autophagy as a potential treatment for these diseases has grown rapidly.


title: Autophagy

text: Four forms of autophagy have been identified: macroautophagy, microautophagy, chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), and crinophagy. In macroautophagy (the most thoroughly researched form of autophagy), cytoplasmic components (like mitochondria) are targeted and isolated from the rest of the cell within a double-membrane vesicle known as an autophagosome, which, in time, fuses with an available lysosome, bringing its specialty process of waste management and disposal; and eventually the contents of the vesicle (now called an autolysosome) are degraded and recycled. In crinophagy (the least well-known and researched form of autophagy), unnecessary secretory granules are degraded and recycled.


title: Autophagy

text: In disease, autophagy has been seen as an adaptive response to stress, promoting survival of the cell; but in other cases, it appears to promote cell death and morbidity. In the extreme case of starvation, the breakdown of cellular components promotes cellular survival by maintaining cellular energy levels.


title: Autophagy

text: The word "autophagy" was in existence and frequently used from the middle of the 19th century. In its present usage, the term autophagy was coined by Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve in 1963 based on his discovery of the functions of lysosome. The identification of autophagy-related genes in yeast in the 1990s allowed researchers to deduce the mechanisms of autophagy, which eventually led to the award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Japanese researcher Yoshinori Ohsumi.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy was first observed by Keith R. Porter and his student Thomas Ashford at the Rockefeller Institute. In January 1962 they reported an increased number of lysosomes in rat liver cells after the addition of glucagon, and that some displaced lysosomes towards the centre of the cell contained other cell organelles such as mitochondria. They called this autolysis after Christian de Duve and Alex B. Novikoff. However Porter and Ashford wrongly interpreted their data as lysosome formation (ignoring the pre-existing organelles). Lysosomes could not be cell organelles, but part of cytoplasm such as mitochondria, and that hydrolytic enzymes were produced by microbodies. In 1963 Hruban, Spargo and colleagues published a detailed ultrastructural description of "focal cytoplasmic degradation", which referenced a 1955 German study of injury-induced sequestration. Hruban, Spargo and colleagues recognized three continuous stages of maturation of the sequestered cytoplasm to lysosomes, and that the process was not limited to injury states that functioned under physiological conditions for "reutilization of cellular materials", and the "disposal of organelles" during differentiation. Inspired by this discovery, de Duve christened the phenomena "autophagy". Unlike Porter and Ashford, de Duve conceived the term as a part of lysosomal function while describing the role of glucagon as a major inducer of cell degradation in the liver. With his student Russell Deter, he established that lysosomes are responsible for glucagon-induced autophagy. This was the first time the fact that lysosomes are the sites of intracellular autophagy was established.


title: Autophagy

text: In the 1990s several groups of scientists independently discovered autophagy-related genes using the budding yeast. Notably, Yoshinori Ohsumi and Michael Thumm examined starvation-induced non-selective autophagy; in the meantime, Daniel J. Klionsky discovered the cytoplasm-to-vacuole targeting (CVT) pathway, which is a form of selective autophagy. They soon found that they were in fact looking at essentially the same pathway, just from different angles. Initially, the genes discovered by these and other yeast groups were given different names (APG, AUT, CVT, GSA, PAG, PAZ, and PDD). A unified nomenclature was advocated in 2003 by the yeast researchers to use ATG to denote autophagy genes. The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi, although some have pointed out that the award could have been more inclusive.


title: Autophagy

text: The field of autophagy research experienced accelerated growth at the turn of the 21st century. Knowledge of ATG genes provided scientists more convenient tools to dissect functions of autophagy in human health and disease. In 1999, a landmark discovery connecting autophagy with cancer was published by Beth Levine's group. To this date, relationship between cancer and autophagy continues to be a main theme of autophagy research. The roles of autophagy in neurodegeneration and immune defense also received considerable attention. In 2003, the first Gordon Research Conference on autophagy was held at Waterville. In 2005, Daniel J Klionsky launched "Autophagy", a scientific journal dedicated to this field. The first Keystone Symposia Conference on autophagy was held in 2007 at Monterey. In 2008, Carol A Mercer created a BHMT fusion protein (GST-BHMT), which showed starvation-induced site-specific fragmentation in cell lines. The degradation of betaine homocysteine methyltransferase (BHMT), a metabolic enzyme, could be used to assess autophagy flux in mammalian cells.


title: Autophagy

text: Macro, micro, and Chaperone mediated autophagy are mediated by autophagy-related genes and their associated enzymes. Macroautophagy is then divided into bulk and selective autophagy. In the selective autophagy is the autophagy of organelles; mitophagy, lipophagy, pexophagy, chlorophagy, ribophagy and others.


title: Autophagy

text: Macroautophagy is the main pathway, used primarily to eradicate damaged cell organelles or unused proteins. First the phagophore engulfs the material that needs to be degraded, which forms a double membrane known as an autophagosome, around the organelle marked for destruction. The autophagosome then travels through the cytoplasm of the cell to a lysosome in mammals, or vacuoles in yeast and plants, and the two organelles fuse. Within the lysosome/vacuole, the contents of the autophagosome are degraded via acidic lysosomal hydrolase.


title: Autophagy

text: Microautophagy, on the other hand, involves the direct engulfment of cytoplasmic material into the lysosome. This occurs by invagination, meaning the inward folding of the lysosomal membrane, or cellular protrusion.


title: Autophagy

text: Chaperone-mediated autophagy, or CMA, is a very complex and specific pathway, which involves the recognition by the hsc70-containing complex. This means that a protein must contain the recognition site for this hsc70 complex which will allow it to bind to this chaperone, forming the CMA- substrate/chaperone complex. This complex then moves to the lysosomal membrane-bound protein that will recognise and bind with the CMA receptor. Upon recognition, the substrate protein gets unfolded and it is translocated across the lysosome membrane with the assistance of the lysosomal hsc70 chaperone. CMA is significantly different from other types of autophagy because it translocates protein material in a one by one manner, and it is extremely selective about what material crosses the lysosomal barrier.


title: Autophagy

text: Mitophagy is the selective degradation of mitochondria by autophagy. It often occurs to defective mitochondria following damage or stress. Mitophagy promotes the turnover of mitochondria and prevents the accumulation of dysfunctional mitochondria which can lead to cellular degeneration. It is mediated by Atg32 (in yeast) and NIX and its regulator BNIP3 in mammals. Mitophagy is regulated by PINK1 and parkin proteins. The occurrence of mitophagy is not limited to the damaged mitochondria but also involves undamaged ones.


title: Autophagy

text: Lipophagy is the degradation of lipids by autophagy, a function which has been shown to exist in both animal and fungal cells. The role of lipophagy in plant cells, however, remains elusive. In lipophagy the target are lipid structures called lipid droplets (LDs), spheric "organelles" with a core of mainly triacylglycerols (TAGs) and a unilayer of phospholipids and membrane proteins. In animal cells the main lipophagic pathway is via the engulfment of LDs by the phagophore, macroautophagy. In fungal cells on the other hand microplipophagy constitutes the main pathway and is especially well studied in the budding yeast "Saccharomyces cerevisiae""." Lipophagy was first discovered in mice and published 2009.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy targets genus-specific proteins, so orthologous proteins which share sequence homology with each other are recognized as substrates by a particular autophagy targeting protein. There exists a complementarity of autophagy targeting proteins which potentially increase infection risk upon mutation. The lack of overlap among the targets of the 3 autophagy proteins and the large overlap in terms of the genera show that autophagy could target different sets of bacterial proteins from a same pathogen. On one hand, the redundancy in targeting a same genera is beneficial for robust pathogen recognition. But, on the other hand, the complementarity in the specific bacterial proteins could make the host more susceptible to chronic disorders and infections if the gene encoding one of the autophagy targeting proteins becomes mutated, and the autophagy system is overloaded or suffers other malfunctions. Moreover, autophagy targets virulence factors and virulence factors responsible for more general functions such as nutrient acquisition and motility are recognized by multiple autophagy targeting proteins. And the specialized virulence factors such as autolysins, and iron sequestering proteins are potentially recognized uniquely by a single autophagy targeting protein. The autophagy proteins CALCOCO2/NDP52 and MAP1LC3/LC3 may have evolved specifically to target pathogens or pathogenic proteins for autophagic degradation. While SQSTM1/p62 targets more generic bacterial proteins containing a target motif but not related to virulence.


title: Autophagy

text: On the other hand, bacterial proteins from various pathogenic genera are also able to modulate autophagy. There are genus-specific patterns in the phases of autophagy that are potentially regulated by a given pathogen group. Some autophagy phases can only be modulated by particular pathogens, while some phases are modulated by multiple pathogen genera. Some of the interplay-related bacterial proteins have proteolytic and post-translational activity such as phosphorylation and ubiquitination and can interfere with the activity of autophagy proteins.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy is executed by autophagy-related (Atg) genes. Prior to 2003, ten or more names were used, but after this point a unified nomenclature was devised by fungal autophagy researchers. Atg or ATG stands for autophagy related. It does not specify gene or a protein.


title: Autophagy

text: The first autophagy genes were identified by genetic screens conducted in "Saccharomyces cerevisiae". Following their identification those genes were functionally characterized and their orthologs in a variety of different organisms were identified and studied. Today, thirty-six Atg proteins have been classified as especially important for autophagy, of which 18 belong to the core machinery


title: Autophagy

text: In mammals, amino acid sensing and additional signals such as growth factors and reactive oxygen species regulate the activity of the protein kinases mTOR and AMPK. These two kinases regulate autophagy through inhibitory phosphorylation of the Unc-51-like kinases ULK1 and ULK2 (mammalian homologues of Atg1). Induction of autophagy results in the dephosphorylation and activation of the ULK kinases. ULK is part of a protein complex containing Atg13, Atg101 and FIP200. ULK phosphorylates and activates Beclin-1 (mammalian homologue of Atg6), which is also part of a protein complex. The autophagy-inducible Beclin-1 complex contains the proteins PIK3R4(p150), Atg14L and the class III phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate kinase (PI(3)K) Vps34. The active ULK and Beclin-1 complexes re-localize to the site of autophagosome initiation, the phagophore, where they both contribute to the activation of downstream autophagy components.


title: Autophagy

text: Once active, VPS34 phosphorylates the lipid phosphatidylinositol to generate phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PtdIns(3)P) on the surface of the phagophore. The generated PtdIns(3)P is used as a docking point for proteins harboring a PtdIns(3)P binding motif. WIPI2, a PtdIns(3)P binding protein of the WIPI (WD-repeat protein interacting with phosphoinositides) protein family, was recently shown to physically bind Atg16L1. Atg16L1 is a member of an E3-like protein complex involved in one of two ubiquitin-like conjugation systems essential for autophagosome formation. The FIP200 cis-Golgi-derived membranes fuse with ATG16L1-positive endosomal membranes to form the prophagophore termed HyPAS (hybrid pre-autophagosomal structure). ATG16L1 binding to WIPI2 mediates ATG16L1's activity. This leads to downstream conversion of prophagophore into ATG8-positive phagophore via a ubiquitin-like conjugation system.


title: Autophagy

text: The first of the two ubiquitin-like conjugation systems involved in autophagy covalently binds the ubiquitin-like protein Atg12 to Atg5. The resulting conjugate protein then binds Atg16L1 to form an E3-like complex which functions as part of the second ubiquitin-like conjugation system. This complex binds and activates Atg3, which covalently attaches mammalian homologues of the ubiquitin-like yeast protein ATG8 (LC3A-C, GATE16, and GABARAPL1-3), the most studied being LC3 proteins, to the lipid phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) on the surface of autophagosomes. Lipidated LC3 contributes to the closure of autophagosomes, and enables the docking of specific cargos and adaptor proteins such as Sequestosome-1/p62. The completed autophagosome then fuses with a lysosome through the actions of multiple proteins, including SNAREs and UVRAG. Following the fusion LC3 is retained on the vesicle's inner side and degraded along with the cargo, while the LC3 molecules attached to the outer side are cleaved off by Atg4 and recycled. The contents of the autolysosome are subsequently degraded and their building blocks are released from the vesicle through the action of permeases.


title: Autophagy

text: Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) stimulates autophagy by preventing acetylation of proteins (via deacetylation) required for autophagy as demonstrated in cultured cells and embryonic and neonatal tissues. This function provides a link between sirtuin expression and the cellular response to limited nutrients due to caloric restriction.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy has roles in various cellular functions. One particular example is in yeasts, where the nutrient starvation induces a high level of autophagy. This allows unneeded proteins to be degraded and the amino acids recycled for the synthesis of proteins that are essential for survival. In higher eukaryotes, autophagy is induced in response to the nutrient depletion that occurs in animals at birth after severing off the trans-placental food supply, as well as that of nutrient starved cultured cells and tissues. Mutant yeast cells that have a reduced autophagic capability rapidly perish in nutrition-deficient conditions. Studies on the "apg" mutants suggest that autophagy via autophagic bodies is indispensable for protein degradation in the vacuoles under starvation conditions, and that at least 15 APG genes are involved in autophagy in yeast. A gene known as ATG7 has been implicated in nutrient-mediated autophagy, as mice studies have shown that starvation-induced autophagy was impaired in "atg7"-deficient mice.


title: Autophagy

text: Vesicular stomatitis virus is believed to be taken up by the autophagosome from the cytosol and translocated to the endosomes where detection takes place by a pattern recognition receptor called toll-like receptor 7, detecting single stranded RNA. Following activation of the toll-like receptor, intracellular signaling cascades are initiated, leading to induction of interferon and other antiviral cytokines. A subset of viruses and bacteria subvert the autophagic pathway to promote their own replication. Galectin-8 has recently been identified as an intracellular "danger receptor", able to initiate autophagy against intracellular pathogens. When galectin-8 binds to a damaged vacuole, it recruits an autophagy adaptor such as NDP52 leading to the formation of an autophagosome and bacterial degradation.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy degrades damaged organelles, cell membranes and proteins, and insufficient autophagy is thought to be one of the main reasons for the accumulation of damaged cells and aging. Autophagy and autophagy regulators are involved in response to lysosomal damage, often directed by galectins such as galectin-3 and galectin-8.


title: Autophagy

text: One of the mechanisms of programmed cell death (PCD) is associated with the appearance of autophagosomes and depends on autophagy proteins. This form of cell death most likely corresponds to a process that has been morphologically defined as autophagic PCD. One question that constantly arises, however, is whether autophagic activity in dying cells is the cause of death or is actually an attempt to prevent it. Morphological and histochemical studies have not so far proved a causative relationship between the autophagic process and cell death. In fact, there have recently been strong arguments that autophagic activity in dying cells might actually be a survival mechanism. Studies of the metamorphosis of insects have shown cells undergoing a form of PCD that appears distinct from other forms; these have been proposed as examples of autophagic cell death. Recent pharmacological and biochemical studies have proposed that survival and lethal autophagy can be distinguished by the type and degree of regulatory signaling during stress particularly after viral infection. Although promising, these findings have not been examined in non-viral systems.


title: Autophagy

text: Autophagy is essential for basal homeostasis; it is also extremely important in maintaining muscle homeostasis during physical exercise. Autophagy at the molecular level is only partially understood. A study of mice shows that autophagy is important for the ever-changing demands of their nutritional and energy needs, particularly through the metabolic pathways of protein catabolism. In a 2012 study conducted by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, mutant mice (with a knock-in mutation of BCL2 phosphorylation sites to produce progeny that showed normal levels of basal autophagy yet were deficient in stress-induced autophagy) were tested to challenge this theory. Results showed that when compared to a control group, these mice illustrated a decrease in endurance and an altered glucose metabolism during acute exercise.


title: Autophagy

text: Another study demonstrated that skeletal muscle fibers of collagen VI in knockout mice showed signs of degeneration due to an insufficiency of autophagy which led to an accumulation of damaged mitochondria and excessive cell death. Exercise-induced autophagy was unsuccessful however; but when autophagy was induced artificially post-exercise, the accumulation of damaged organelles in collagen VI deficient muscle fibres was prevented and cellular homeostasis was maintained. Both studies demonstrate that autophagy induction may contribute to the beneficial metabolic effects of exercise and that it is essential in the maintaining of muscle homeostasis during exercise, particularly in collagen VI fibers.


title: Autophagy

text: Work at the Institute for Cell Biology, University of Bonn, showed that a certain type of autophagy, i.e. chaperone-assisted selective autophagy (CASA), is induced in contracting muscles and is required for maintaining the muscle sarcomere under mechanical tension. The CASA chaperone complex recognizes mechanically damaged cytoskeleton components and directs these components through a ubiquitin-dependent autophagic sorting pathway to lysosomes for disposal. This is necessary for maintaining muscle activity.


title: Autophagy

text: Because autophagy decreases with age and age is a major risk factor for osteoarthritis, the role of autophagy in the development of this disease is suggested. Proteins involved in autophagy are reduced with age in both human and mouse articular cartilage. Mechanical injury to cartilage explants in culture also reduced autophagy proteins. Autophagy is constantly activated in normal cartilage but it is compromised with age and precedes cartilage cell death and structural damage. Thus autophagy is involved in a normal protective process (chondroprotection) in the joint.


title: Autophagy

text: Cancer often occurs when several different pathways that regulate cell differentiation are disturbed. Autophagy plays an important role in cancer – both in protecting against cancer as well as potentially contributing to the growth of cancer. Autophagy can contribute to cancer by promoting survival of tumor cells that have been starved, or that degrade apoptotic mediators through autophagy: in such cases, use of inhibitors of the late stages of autophagy (such as chloroquine), on the cells that use autophagy to survive, increases the number of cancer cells killed by antineoplastic drugs.


title: Autophagy

text: The role of autophagy in cancer is one that has been highly researched and reviewed. There is evidence that emphasizes the role of autophagy as both a tumor suppressor and a factor in tumor cell survival. Recent research has shown, however, that autophagy is more likely to be used as a tumor suppressor according to several models.


title: Autophagy

text: Several experiments have been done with mice and varying Beclin1, a protein that regulates autophagy. When the Beclin1 gene was altered to be heterozygous (Beclin 1+/-), the mice were found to be tumor-prone. However, when Beclin1 was overexpressed, tumor development was inhibited. Care should be exercised when interpreting phenotypes of beclin mutants and attributing the observations to a defect in autophagy, however: Beclin1 is generally required for phosphatidylinositol 3- phosphate production and as such it affects numerous lysosomal and endosomal functions, including endocytosis and endocytic degradation of activated growth factor receptors. In support of the possibility that Beclin1 affects cancer development through an autophagy-independent pathway is the fact that core autophagy factors which are not known to affect other cellular processes and are definitely not known to affect cell proliferation and cell death, such as Atg7 or Atg5, show a much different phenotype when the respective gene is knocked out, which does not include tumor formation. In addition, full knockout of Beclin1 is embryonic lethal whereas knockout of Atg7 or Atg5 is not.


title: Autophagy

text: Necrosis and chronic inflammation also has been shown to be limited through autophagy which helps protect against the formation of tumor cells.


title: Autophagy

text: Cells that undergo an extreme amount of stress experience cell death either through apoptosis or necrosis. Prolonged autophagy activation leads to a high turnover rate of proteins and organelles. A high rate above the survival threshold may kill cancer cells with a high apoptotic threshold. This technique can be utilized as a therapeutic cancer treatment.


title: Autophagy

text: Alternatively, autophagy has also been shown to play a large role in tumor cell survival. In cancerous cells, autophagy is used as a way to deal with stress on the cell. Induction of autophagy by miRNA-4673, for example, is a pro-survival mechanism that improves the resistance of cancer cells to radiation. Once these autophagy related genes were inhibited, cell death was potentiated. The increase in metabolic energy is offset by autophagy functions. These metabolic stresses include hypoxia, nutrient deprivation, and an increase in proliferation. These stresses activate autophagy in order to recycle ATP and maintain survival of the cancerous cells. Autophagy has been shown to enable continued growth of tumor cells by maintaining cellular energy production. By inhibiting autophagy genes in these tumors cells, regression of the tumor and extended survival of the organs affected by the tumors were found. Furthermore, inhibition of autophagy has also been shown to enhance the effectiveness of anticancer therapies.


title: Autophagy

text: New developments in research have found that targeted autophagy may be a viable therapeutic solution in fighting cancer. As discussed above, autophagy plays both a role in tumor suppression and tumor cell survival. Thus, the qualities of autophagy can be used as a strategy for cancer prevention. The first strategy is to induce autophagy and enhance its tumor suppression attributes. The second strategy is to inhibit autophagy and thus induce apoptosis.


title: Autophagy

text: The first strategy has been tested by looking at dose-response anti-tumor effects during autophagy-induced therapies. These therapies have shown that autophagy increases in a dose-dependent manner. This is directly related to the growth of cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner as well. These data support the development of therapies that will encourage autophagy. Secondly, inhibiting the protein pathways directly known to induce autophagy may also serve as an anticancer therapy.


title: Autophagy

text: The second strategy is based on the idea that autophagy is a protein degradation system used to maintain homeostasis and the findings that inhibition of autophagy often leads to apoptosis. Inhibition of autophagy is riskier as it may lead to cell survival instead of the desired cell death.


title: Autophagy

text: Negative regulators of autophagy, such as mTOR, cFLIP, EGFR, (GAPR-1), and Rubicon are orchestrated to function within different stages of the autophagy cascade. The end-products of autophagic digestion may also serve as a negative-feedback regulatory mechanism to stop prolonged activity.


title: Autophagy

text: Cells of vertebrate organisms normally activate inflammation to enhance the capacity of the immune system to clear infections and to initiate the processes that restore tissue structure and function. Therefore, it is critical to couple regulation of mechanisms for removal of cellular and bacterial debris to the principal factors that regulate inflammation: The degradation of cellular components by the lysosome during autophagy serves to recycle vital molecules and generate a pool of building blocks to help the cell respond to a changing microenvironment. Proteins that control inflammation and autophagy form a network that is critical for tissue functions, which is dysregulated in cancer:


title: Autophagy

text: In cancer cells, aberrantly expressed and mutant proteins increase the dependence of cell survival on the “rewired” network of proteolytic systems that protects malignant cells from apoptotic proteins and from recognition by the immune system. This renders cancer cells vulnerable to intervention on regulators of autophagy.


title: Autophagy

text: Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder partially caused by the cell death of brain and brain stem cells in many nuclei like the substantia nigra. Parkinson's disease is characterized by inclusions of a protein called alpha-synuclien (Lewy bodies) in affected neurons that cells cannot break down. Deregulation of the autophagy pathway and mutation of alleles regulating autophagy are believed to cause neurodegenerative diseases. Autophagy is essential for neuronal survival. Without efficient autophagy, neurons gather ubiquitinated protein aggregates and degrade. Ubiquitinated proteins are proteins that have been tagged with ubiquitin to get degraded. Mutations of synuclein alleles lead to lysosome pH increase and hydrolase inhibition. As a result, lysosomes degradative capacity is decreased. There are several genetic mutations implicated in the disease, including loss of function PINK1 and Parkin. Loss of function in these genes can lead to damaged mitochondrial accumulation and protein aggregates than can lead to cellular degeneration. Mitochondria is involved in Parkinson's disease. In idiopathic Parkinson's disease, the disease is commonly caused by dysfunctional mitochondria, cellular oxidative stress, autophagic alterations and the aggregation of proteins. These can lead to mitochondrial swelling and depolarization.


title: Autophagy

text: Excessive activity of the crinophagy form of autophagy in the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas could reduce the quantity of insulin available for secretion, leading to type 2 diabetes.


title: Autophagy

text: Since dysregulation of autophagy is involved in the pathogenesis of a broad range of diseases, great efforts are invested to identify and characterize small synthetic or natural molecules that can regulate it.


title: Hector

text: In Greek mythology, Hector (; , ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing countless Greek warriors. He was ultimately killed in single combat by Achilles, who later dragged his dead body around the city of Troy behind his chariot.


title: Hector

text: In Greek, is a derivative of the verb ἔχειν "ékhein", archaic form * ('to have' or 'to hold'), from Proto-Indo-European *"seɡ́ʰ-" ('to hold'). , or as found in Aeolic poetry, is also an epithet of Zeus in his capacity as 'he who holds [everything together]'. Hector's name could thus be taken to mean 'holding fast'.


title: Hector

text: Hector was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the "Chronography" as "dark-skinned, tall, very stoutly built, strong, good nose, wooly-haired, good beard, squinting, speech defect, noble, fearsome warrior, deep-voiced". Meanwhile, in the account of Dares the Phrygian and also that of the Trojan Priest and author, Dares Phrygius, he was illustrated as ". . spoke with a slight lisp. His complexion was fair, his hair curly. His eyes would blink attractively. His movements were swift. His face, with its beard, was noble. He was handsome, fierce, and high-spirited, merciful to the citizens, and deserving of love.". Greek author and poet, Homer, described Hector as “peace-loving, thoughtful, as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives.”


title: Hector

text: Hector of Troy was a Trojan Prince and warrior of Troy. He was the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, making him a prince of the royal house and heir to his father’s throne. Hector wed with Andromache, who was his wife, and the mother of his first and only infant son, Scamandrius, who the people of Troy knew as Astyanax.


title: Hector

text: Hector throughout the Trojan War brought glory to the Trojans as he was their best fighter and heir. He was loved by all his people and known for never turning down a fight. He was gracious to all and thus thought of favorably by all, except by the Achaeans. As he was the Trojan's best warrior he was both hated and feared by the Achaeans. He turned the tide of battle, breaking down their barriers and slaughtering their troops. Although when he killed Patroclus, Achilles reentered the war and the Trojans were beaten back again.


title: Hector

text: Hector died at the hand of the Achaean warrior named Achilles. According to Homer’s book, “The Iliad”, Hector was killed in single combat by Achilles. Hector’s parents sat on Troy’s wall, pleading for him to take shelter within the safe walls. Hector refused, wanting to talk with Achilles, in an attempt to resolve the altercation without bloodshed, though Achilles was not one to be reasoned with due to Hector slaying his close wartime companion, Patroclus. Achilles chased Hector around the gates of Troy three times. Apollo gave Hector strength so he could always stay in the lead. But whenever he neared the entrance of the walls to the city, Achilles cut him off. Finally Athena took the guise of his favorite brother, Deiphobus telling him that they could face Achilles together. Tricked into thinking he might have a chance at winning, Hector waited for Achilles. He then proposes that whoever wins, be it him or Achilles, will be respectful to the other's body and give it back to the other's friend so they can have a proper burial. Achilles refuses saying that there was "...no love between us. No truce till the other falls and gluts with blood" (Book 22, 313-314). After a short fight, Achilles stabbed Hector in his throat, which resulted in his untimely but fated death. Hector then foretold Achilles' own death, saying that he would be killed by Paris (mythology) and Apollo.


title: Hector

text: After slaying him, Achilles stripped him of his armor. The other Achaeans then gathered to look upon and stab Hector's body. Achilles gave a few words in victory and tied Hector’s dead body, by the heels, to his chariot. He dragged him around the city of Troy, as the Trojans in the safety of their walls watched and lamented, especially Andromache Hector's wife.


title: Hector

text: What Achilles did was an act of utter disrespect and would later bring the wrath of the gods upon him.


title: Hector

text: During and after Patroclus' funeral Achilles dragged Hector's body around his pyre. The gods Aphrodite and Apollo protected his body from the dogs, disfigurement, and decomposition. It would be another 12 days until Priam would go to Achilles with a ransom for Hector's body.


title: Hector

text: For ten years, the Achaeans besieged Troy and their allies in the east. Hector commanded the Trojan army, with a number of subordinates including Polydamas, and his brothers Deiphobus, Helenus and Paris. By all accounts, Hector was the best warrior the Trojans and their allies could field, and his fighting prowess was admired by Greeks and his own people alike.


title: Hector

text: In the "Iliad", Hector's exploits in the war prior to the events of the book are recapitulated. He had fought the Greek champion Protesilaus in single combat at the start of the war and killed him. A prophecy had stated that the first Greek to land on Trojan soil would die. Thus, Protesilaus, Ajax, and Odysseus would not land. Finally, Odysseus threw his shield out and landed on that, and Protesilaus jumped next from his own ship. In the ensuing fight, Hector killed him, fulfilling the prophecy.


title: Hector

text: As described by Homer in the "Iliad" at the advice of Hector’s brother Helenus (who also was divinely inspired) and being told by him that he was not destined to die yet, Hector managed to get both armies seated and challenged any one of the Greek warriors to single combat. The Argives were initially reluctant to accept the challenge. However, after Nestor's chiding, nine Greek heroes stepped up to the challenge and drew by lot to see who was to face Hector. Ajax won and fought Hector. Hector was unable to pierce Ajax's famous shield, but Ajax crushed Hector's shield with a rock and stabbed through his armor with a spear, drawing blood, upon which the god Apollo intervened and the duel was ended as the sun was setting. Hector gave Ajax his sword, which Ajax later used to kill himself. Ajax gave Hector his girdle that Achilles later attached to his chariot to drag Hector's corpse around the walls of Troy.


title: Hector

text: The Greeks and the Trojans made a truce to bury the dead. In the early dawn the next day, the Greeks took advantage of the truce to build a wall and ditch around the ships while Zeus watched in the distance.


title: Hector

text: Another mention of Hector's exploits in the early years of war was given in the "Iliad" in book IX. During the embassy to Achilles, Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax all try to persuade Achilles to rejoin the fight. In his response, Achilles points out that while Hector was terrorizing the Greek forces now, and that while he himself had fought in their front lines, Hector had 'no wish' to take his force far beyond the walls and out from the Skaian Gate and nearby oak tree. He then claims, 'There he stood up to me alone one day, and he barely escaped my onslaught.'


title: Hector

text: Another duel that took place, although Hector received help from Aeneas (his cousin) and Deiphobus, was when Hector rushed to try to save his brother Troilus from Achilles' hands. But he came too late and Troilus had already perished. All Hector could do was to take the lifeless body of Troilus while Achilles escaped after he fought his way through from the Trojan reinforcements.


title: Hector

text: In the tenth year of the war, observing Paris avoiding combat with Menelaus, Hector scolds him with having brought trouble on his whole country and now refusing to fight. Paris therefore proposes single combat between himself and Menelaus, with Helen to go to the victor, ending the war. The duel, however, leads to inconclusive results due to intervention by Aphrodite who leads Paris off the field. After Pandarus wounds Menelaus with an arrow, the fight begins again.


title: Hector

text: The Greeks attack and drive the Trojans back. Hector must now go out to lead a counter-attack. According to Homer his wife Andromache, carrying in her arms her son Astyanax, intercepts Hector at the gate, pleading with him not to go out for her sake as well as his son's. Hector knows that Troy and the house of Priam are doomed to fall and that the gloomy fate of his wife and infant son will be to die or go into slavery in a foreign land. With understanding, compassion, and tenderness he explains that he cannot personally refuse to fight, and comforts her with the idea that no one can take him until it is his time to go. The gleaming bronze helmet frightens Astyanax and makes him cry. Hector takes it off, embraces his wife and son, and for his sake prays aloud to Zeus that his son might be chief after him, become more glorious in battle than he, to bring home the blood of his enemies, and make his mother proud. Once he left for battle, those in the house began to mourn as they knew he would not return. Hector and Paris pass through the gate and rally the Trojans, raising havoc among the Greeks.


title: Hector

text: Zeus weighs the fates of the two armies in the balance, and that of the Greeks sinks down. The Trojans press the Greeks into their camp over the ditch and wall and would have laid hands on the ships, but Agamemnon rallies the Greeks in person. The Trojans are driven off, night falls, and Hector resolves to take the camp and burn the ships the next day. The Trojans bivouac in the field.


title: Hector

text: Hector refrains from battle until Agamemnon leaves the field, wounded in the arm by a spear. Then Hector rallies the Trojans:


title: Hector

text: Diomedes and Odysseus hinder Hector and win the Greeks some time to retreat, but the Trojans sweep down upon the wall and rain blows upon it. The Greeks in the camp contest the gates to secure entrance for their fleeing warriors. The Trojans try to pull down the ramparts while the Greeks rain arrows upon them. Hector smashes open a gate with a large stone, clears the gate and calls on the Trojans to scale the wall, which they do, and


title: Hector

text: The battle rages inside the camp. Hector goes down, hit by a stone thrown by Ajax, but Apollo arrives from Olympus and infuses strength into "the shepherd of the people", who orders a chariot attack, with Apollo clearing the way. Many combats, deaths, boasts, threats, epithets, figures of speech, stories, lines of poetry and books of the Iliad later, Hector lays hold of Protesilaus' ship and calls for fire. The Trojans cannot bring it to him, as Ajax kills everyone who tries. Eventually, Hector breaks Ajax' spear with his sword, forcing him to give ground, and he sets the ship afire.


title: Hector

text: These events are all according to the will of the gods, who have decreed the fall of Troy, and therefore intend to tempt Achilles back into the war. Patroclus, Achilles' closest companion, disguised in the armor of Achilles, enters the combat leading the Myrmidons and the rest of the Achaeans to force a Trojan withdrawal. After Patroclus has routed the Trojan army, Hector, with the aid of Apollo and Euphorbus, kills Patroclus, vaunting over him:


title: Hector

text: Hector strips the armor of Achilles off the fallen Patroclus and gives it to his men to take back to the city. Glaucus accuses Hector of cowardice for not challenging Ajax. Stung, Hector calls for the armor, puts it on, and uses it to rally the Trojans. Zeus regards the donning of a hero's armor as an act of insolence by a fool about to die, but it makes Hector strong for now.


title: Hector

text: The next day, the enraged Achilles renounces the wrath that kept him out of action and routs the Trojans, forcing them back to the city. Hector chooses to remain outside the gates of Troy to face Achilles, partly because had he listened to Polydamas and retreated with his troops the previous night, Achilles would not have killed so many Trojans. When he sees Achilles, however, Hector is seized by fear and turns to flee. Achilles chases him around the city three times before Hector masters his fear and turns to face Achilles. But Athena, in the disguise of Hector's brother Deiphobus, has deluded Hector. He requests from Achilles that the victor should return the other's body after the duel, (though Hector himself made it clear he planned to throw the body of Patroclus to the dogs) but Achilles refuses. Achilles hurls his spear at Hector, who dodges it, but Athena brings it back to Achilles' hands without Hector noticing. Hector then throws his own spear at Achilles; it hits his shield and does no injury. When Hector turns to face his supposed brother to retrieve another spear, he sees no one there. At that moment he realizes that he is doomed. Hector decides that he will go down fighting and that men will talk about his bravery in years to come.


title: Hector

text: Hector pulls out his sword, now his only weapon, and charges. But Achilles grabbed his thrown spears that were delivered to him by the unseen Athena who wore the Hades helmet. Achilles then aimed his spear and pierced the collar bone section of Hector, the only part of the stolen Armor of Achilles that did not protect Hector. The wound was fatal yet allowed Hector to speak to Achilles. In his final moments, Hector begs Achilles for an honorable funeral, but Achilles replies that he will let the dogs and vultures devour Hector's flesh. (Throughout the Homeric poems, several references are made to dogs, vultures, and other creatures that devour the dead. It can be seen as another way of saying one will die.) Hector dies, prophesying that Achilles' death will follow soon:


title: Hector

text: Be careful now; for I might be made into the gods' curse ... upon you, on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo...destroy you in the Skainan gates, for all your valor.


title: Hector

text: After his death, Achilles slits Hector's heels and passes the girdle that Ajax had given Hector through the slits. He then fastens the girdle to his chariot and drives his fallen enemy through the dust to the Danaan camp. For the next twelve days, Achilles mistreats the body, but it remains preserved from all injury by Apollo and Aphrodite. After these twelve days, the gods can no longer stand watching it and send down two messengers: Iris, another messenger god, and Thetis, the mother of Achilles. Thetis has told Achilles to allow King Priam to come and take the body for ransom. Once King Priam has been notified that Achilles will allow him to claim the body, he goes to his strongroom to withdraw the ransom. The ransom King Priam offers includes twelve fine robes, twelve white mantles, several richly embroidered tunics, ten bars of yellow gold, a special gold cup, and several cauldrons. Priam himself goes to claim his son's body, and Hermes grants him safe passage by casting a charm that will make anyone who looks at him fall asleep.


title: Hector

text: Achilles, moved by Priam's actions and following his mother's orders sent by Zeus, returns Hector's body to Priam and promises him a truce of twelve days to allow the Trojans to perform funeral rites for Hector. Priam returns to Troy with the body of his son, and it is given full funeral honors. Even Helen mourns Hector, for he had always been kind to her and protected her from spite. The last lines of the "Iliad" are dedicated to Hector's funeral. Homer concludes by referring to the Trojan prince as the "Breaker of Horses."


title: Hector

text: The most valuable historical evidence for the Battle of Troy are treaties and letters mentioned in Hittite cuneiform texts of the same approximate era, which mention an unruly Western Anatolian warlord named "Piyama-Radu" (possibly Priam) and his successor "Alaksandu" (possibly Alexander, the nickname of Paris) both based in "Wilusa" (possibly Ilion/Ilios), as well as the god "Apaliunas" (possibly Apollo).


title: Hector

text: Other such pieces of evidence are names of Trojan heroes in Linear B tablets. Twenty out of fifty-eight men's names also known from Homer, including , "E-ko-to" (Hector), are Trojan warriors and some, including Hector, are in a servile capacity. No such conclusion that they are the offspring of Trojan captive women is warranted. Generally the public has to be content with the knowledge that these names existed in Greek in Mycenaean times, although Page hypothesizes that Hector "may very well be ... a familiar Greek form impressed on a similar-sounding foreign name."


title: Hector

text: When Pausanias visited Thebes in Boeotia, in the second century AD, he was shown Hector's tomb and was told that the bones had been transported to Thebes according to a Delphic oracle. Moses I. Finley observes "this typical bit of fiction must mean that there was an old Theban hero Hector, a Greek, whose myths antedated the Homeric poems. Even after Homer had located Hector in Troy for all time, the Thebans held on to their hero, and the Delphic oracle provided the necessary sanction."


title: Hector

text: The pseudepigraphical writer Dares Phrygius states that Hector "spoke with a slight lisp. His complexion was fair, his hair curly. His eyes would blink attractively. His movements were swift. His face, with its beard, was noble. He was handsome, fierce, and high-spirited, merciful to the citizens, and deserving of love."


title: Romanian Revolution

text: The Romanian Revolution (), also known as the Christmas Revolution (), was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world. The Romanian Revolution started in the city of Timișoara and soon spread throughout the country, ultimately culminating in the drumhead trial and execution of longtime Romanian Communist Party (PCR) General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, and the end of 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. It was also the last removal of a Marxist–Leninist government in a Warsaw Pact country during the events of 1989, and the only one that violently overthrew a country's leadership and executed its leader; according to estimates, over one thousand people died and thousands more were injured.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Following World War II, Romania was placed under the Soviet sphere of influence in 1947 with Communist rule implemented. When Romania seceded from Soviet influence in April 1964, Nicolae Ceaușescu became the country's leader the following year. Under his rule, Romania experienced a brief waning of internal repression that led to a positive image both at home and in the West. Amid tensions in the late 1980s, early protests occurred in the city of Timișoara in mid-December on the part of the Hungarian minority in response to an attempt by the government to evict Hungarian Reformed Church pastor László Tőkés. In response, Romanians sought the deposition of Ceaușescu and a change in government in light of similar recent events in neighbouring nations. The country's ubiquitous secret police force, the Securitate, which was both one of the largest in the Eastern Bloc and for decades had been the main suppressor of popular dissent, frequently and violently quashing political disagreement, ultimately proved incapable of stopping the looming, and then highly fatal and successful revolt.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Social and economic malaise had been present in the Socialist Republic of Romania for quite some time, especially during the austerity years of the 1980s. The austerity measures were designed in part by Ceaușescu to repay the country's foreign debts. Shortly after a botched public speech by Ceaușescu in the capital Bucharest that was broadcast to millions of Romanians on state television, rank-and-file members of the military switched, almost unanimously, from supporting the dictator to backing the protesters. Riots, street violence and murder in several Romanian cities over the course of roughly a week led the Romanian leader to flee the capital city on 22 December with his wife, Elena. Evading capture by hastily departing via helicopter effectively portrayed the couple as both fugitives and also acutely guilty of accused crimes. Captured in Târgoviște, they were tried by a drumhead military tribunal on charges of genocide, damage to the national economy, and abuse of power to execute military actions against the Romanian people. They were convicted on all charges, sentenced to death, and immediately executed on Christmas Day 1989, and were the last people to be condemned to death and executed in Romania, as capital punishment was abolished soon after. For several days after Ceaușescu fled, serious fighting and street battles took place between revolutionary soldiers and remaining pro-Ceaușescu Securitate, who were skilled fighters. Hospitals in Bucharest were treating as many as thousands of civilians. Following an ultimatum, many Securitate members turned themselves in on 29 December with the assurance they would not be tried.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Present-day Romania has unfolded in the shadow of the Ceaușescus along with its Communist past, and its tumultuous departure from it. After Ceaușescu was toppled, the National Salvation Front (FSN) quickly took power, promising free and fair elections within five months. Elected in a landslide the following May, the FSN reconstituted as a political party, installed a series of economic and democratic reforms, with further social policy changes being implemented by later governments. Since that point, Romania became far more integrated with the West as opposed to its former, albeit tepid, relations with the Soviet Union. Romania became a member of NATO and the European Union in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Democratic reforms have proven to be moderately successful, though issues with corruption remain. Economic reforms continue, with Romania still possessing a relatively high child poverty rate, but being a high-income country according to the World Bank and on the path of becoming an OECD member.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: In 1981, Ceaușescu began an austerity programme designed to enable Romania to liquidate its entire national debt ($10,000,000,000). To achieve this, many basic goods—including gas, heating and food—were rationed, which drastically reduced the standard of living and increased malnutrition. The infant mortality rate grew to be the highest in Europe.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: The secret police, "Securitate", had become so omnipresent that it made Romania essentially a police state. Free speech was limited and opinions that did not favour the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) were forbidden. The large numbers of Securitate informers made organised dissent nearly impossible. The regime deliberately played on this sense that everyone was being watched to make it easier to bend the people to the Party's will. Even by Soviet Bloc standards, the Securitate was exceptionally brutal.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Ceaușescu created a cult of personality, with weekly shows in stadiums or on streets in different cities dedicated to him, his wife and the Communist Party. There were several megalomaniac projects, such as the construction of the grandiose House of the Republic (today the Palace of the Parliament)—the biggest palace in the world—the adjacent Centrul Civic and a never-completed museum dedicated to Communism and Ceaușescu, today the Casa Radio. These and similar projects drained the country's finances and aggravated the already dire economic situation. Thousands of Bucharest residents were evicted from their homes, which were subsequently demolished to make room for the huge structures.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Unlike the other Warsaw Pact leaders, Ceaușescu had not been slavishly pro-Soviet but rather had pursued an "independent" foreign policy; Romanian forces did not join their Warsaw Pact allies in putting an end to the Prague Spring—an invasion Ceaușescu openly denounced—while Romanian athletes competed at the Soviet-boycotted 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (receiving a standing ovation at the opening ceremonies and proceeding to win 53 medals, trailing only the United States and West Germany in the overall count). Conversely, while Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of reform, Ceaușescu maintained a hard political line and cult of personality.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: The austerity programme started in 1981 and the widespread poverty it introduced made the Communist regime very unpopular. The austerity programmes were met with little resistance among Romanians and there were only a few strikes and labour disputes, of which the Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 and the Brașov Rebellion of November 1987 at the truck manufacturer Steagul Roșu were the most notable. In March 1989, several leading activists of the PCR criticised Ceaușescu's economic policies in a letter, but shortly thereafter he achieved a significant political victory: Romania paid off its external debt of about US$11,000,000,000 several months before the time that even the Romanian dictator expected. However, in the months following the austerity programme, shortages of goods remained the same as before.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Like the East German state newspaper, official Romanian news organs made no mention of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the first days following 9 November 1989. The most notable news in Romanian newspapers of 11 November 1989, was the "masterly lecture by comrade Nicolae Ceaușescu at the extended plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania," in which the Romanian head of state and party highly praised the "brilliant programme for the work and revolutionary struggle of all our people," as well as the "exemplary fulfillment of economic tasks." What had happened 1,500 km northwest of Bucharest, in divided Berlin, during those days is not even mentioned. Socialism is praised as the "way of the free, independent development of the peoples." The same day, on Bucharest's Brezoianu Street and Kogălniceanu Boulevard, a group of students from Cluj-Napoca attempted a demonstration but were quickly apprehended. It initially appeared that Ceaușescu would weather the wave of revolution sweeping across Eastern Europe, as he was formally re-elected for another five-year term as General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party on 24 November at the party's XIV Congress. On that same day, Ceaușescu's counterpart in Czechoslovakia, Miloš Jakeš, resigned along with the entire Communist leadership, effectively ending Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: The three students, Mihnea Paraschivescu, Grațian Vulpe, and the economist Dan Căprariu-Schlachter from Cluj, were detained and investigated by the Securitate at the Rahova Penitentiary on suspicion of propaganda against the socialist society. They were released on 22 December 1989 at 14:00. There were other letters and attempts to draw attention to the economic, cultural, and spiritual oppression of Romanians, but they served only to intensify the activity of the police and Securitate.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: On 20 November 1989 (the day when Ceaușescu was reelected as leader of the Romanian Communist Party) almost all of the Warsaw Pact Communist regimes were institutionally intact. The leading role of the Communist Party was enshrined in their constitutions and the party militia was active. The lone exception was Hungary, where - in October 1989 - the leading role of the party was rescinded from the constitution and the party militia was abolished. However, very soon after Ceaușescu's reelection, the other communist regimes in the Warsaw Pact began to crumble as well. The party militia was abolished in Poland on 23 November and then in Bulgaria on 25 November. The leading role of the party was rescinded from the constitution of Czechoslovakia on 29 November and from that of East Germany on 1 December. Even the Soviet Union's Communist regime started to unravel while Ceaușescu was still in power: on 7 December 1989, one of the 15 Union Republics - Lithuania - removed the leading role of the Communist Party from its constitution.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: On 16 December 1989, the Hungarian minority in Timișoara held a public protest in response to an attempt by the government to evict Hungarian Reformed church Pastor László Tőkés. In July of that year, in an interview with Hungarian television, Tőkés had criticised the regime's Systematisation policy and complained that Romanians did not even know their human rights. As Tőkés described it later, the interview, which had been seen in the border areas and was then spread all over Romania, had "a shock effect upon the Romanians, the "Securitate" as well, on the people of Romania. […] [I]t had an unexpected effect upon the public atmosphere in Romania."


title: Romanian Revolution

text: The government then alleged that Tőkés was inciting ethnic hatred. At the behest of the government, his bishop removed him from his post, thereby depriving him of the right to use the apartment to which he was entitled as a pastor, and assigned him to be a pastor in the countryside. For some time his parishioners gathered around his home to protect him from harassment and eviction. Many passersby spontaneously joined in. As it became clear that the crowd would not disperse, the mayor, Petre Moț, made remarks suggesting that he had overturned the decision to evict Tőkés. Meanwhile, the crowd had grown impatient and, when Moț declined to confirm his statement against the planned eviction in writing, the crowd started to chant anti-communist slogans. Subsequently, police and "Securitate" forces showed up at the scene. By 19:30 the protest had spread and the original cause became largely irrelevant.


title: Romanian Revolution

text: Some of the protesters attempted to burn down the building that housed the district committee of the PCR. The "Securitate" responded with tear gas and water cannons, while police beat up rioters and arrested many of them. Around 21:00 the rioters withdrew. They regrouped eventually around the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral and started a protest march around the city, but again they were confronted by the security forces.