PRI includes inmates and dead people in its ranks

In 2014 the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said that by January 2015 it would have more than 9 million members, so it sought people to affiliate them. However among the people that it managed to register there are missing people, inmates and even victims of murder. They all joined the party on January 1, 2014.

This is the case of Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinosa and her cousin Rocío Alvarado Reyes, who went missing in Chihuahua, apparently with the involvement of the Army, and whose case is being reviewed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). Nitza Paola is registered as a member of the PRI.

Also, Rodolfo Porras González, former alderman in La Concepción, Chihuahua, was killed in 2012, but he joined the PRI on January 1, 2014.

This situation was denounced by the NGO Mexicans in Exile, based in El Paso, Texas, that documents cases of people affiliated by the PRI that are currently missing, dead or in exile in the United States.

"Mexicans in Exile was founded in 2008 in response to the wave of Mexicans in Chihuahua that began fleeing violence in March of that year, when the Army came to the state. Now we not only have to deal with the abuses committed by the Mexican authorities, but we also learnt that the Institutional Revolutionary Party has included in its ranks people who do not even live in the country and others that are missing," said Carlos Specter, lawyer and representative of the organization.

When the NGO started reviewing the lists of PRI affiliates, it realized that they included names of members of criminal organizations who have been arrested and even extradited, such as Óscar Alonso Candelaria Escajeda, aka “La Gata”, who along with his brother, José Rodolfo Candelaria Escajeda trafficked drugs, mainly cannabis, for the Juárez Valley in the border town of Guadalupe in Nuevo León.

Óscar Alonso Candelaria Escajeda was arrested in 2007 and extradited to the United States in 2009. But according to the list of members of the PRI in Chihuahua, he joined the party on January 1, 2014.

Martín Huéramo, exiled in the United States and a member of Mexicans in Exile, said that he has only been a member of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD); however the lists show that he joined the PRI in Chihuahua on January 1, 2014.

"They can not tell me, a living witness, that I joined the PRI on January 1, 2014 while being in exile,” Huéramo said in an interview.

Mexicans in Exile has protested outside the Mexican consulate in El Paso, Texas, to ask President Enrique Peña Nieto to take action on the matter.

"We ask President Enrique Peña Nieto because he is a member of the PRI. How can our identity be stolen?," he said.

Those affected plan to complain before the National Electoral Institute (INE), the National Institute for Access to Information and Data Protection (INAI) and even before the Attorney General's Office (PGR) for identity theft.

The PRI has so far declined to comment.

Some of the people who allegedly joined the party on January 1, 2014 but are exiled in the United States are Alejandro Porras González, Martín Huéramo Reyes, Gerardo Reyes Chávez and José Inés Gallardo Reyes, among others. The list also includes missing people, such as Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinoza, Sofía Aguilera Ornelas, Isela Hernández Lara and Reyna Yadira Mejía Garrido, as well as murder victims, such as Rodolfo Porras González, Aaron Calderón Mirón and Víctor Manuel García Rodríguez, among others.

On Facebook there is a page called 'Bájate del PRI' to denounce undue party affiliations.

Currently the PRI has 10,016,300 members. In 2015 it said to the National Electoral Institute (INE) that it got 2,293,922 new members.