The Mexican Security Secretariat arrested this Friday in Toluca, in the State of Mexico, Isidro Pastor, who was president of the PRI in that State. According to national media, the Attorney General accuses him of having carried out alleged operations with illegal money. The politician, active in the PRI for 16 years, was close to the controversial former Mexican governor Arturo Montiel (1999-2005). In 2004 he sought the candidacy for governor with the tricolor party, but lost the fight with Enrique Peña Nieto, who was head of the state government from 2005 to 2011 and then rose to the presidency.
Pastor, 67, was arrested around midday in a central neighborhood of Toluca, the Mexican capital. Data from the National Detention Registry shows that the politician is already in the Santiaguito Prevention and Social Rehabilitation Center, a prison located on the outskirts of the municipality. Authorities have released no further details, other than his arrest, about the illegal actions attributed to him.
Although the former leader left the ranks of the PRI in 2004, he maintained some importance in the party by being part of the state government’s cabinet until January 2017. Then he tried his luck again to secure the nomination, but this time with an independent candidacy in a territory where the PRI has forged a territorial bastion. The politician then found himself in the middle of a legal dispute to defend his registration and stand at the polls. The electoral authority has assured that it does not meet the requirements to validate his candidacy, but has specified that it will continue to have weight if it fails to pass the filter. “Maybe I will stay on the sidelines, but my people will influence,” he said in an interview with this newspaper in May 2017.
With almost 17 million inhabitants, the State of Mexico is the most populated territory in the country, which makes it a fundamental electoral laboratory for outlining the direction of the general vote in the Republic. The PRI transformed the state into a historical bastion, ruling consecutively for more than 90 years, between 1929 and 2023. It was in those last elections that the PRI showed itself to be losing its strength. Delfina Gómez (Morena) achieved victory at the polls with over 50% of the votes.
