On Friday in Toluca, Mexico, the Mexican Secretariat of Security arrested Isidro Pastor, who was head of that state’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. The Public Prosecutor’s Office accuses him of carrying out alleged operations with illicit funds, according to national media. The politician, who was active in the Institutional Revolutionary Party for 16 years, was close to controversial former Mexican governor Arturo Montiel (1999-2005). In 2004, he sought to run for governor of the state through the Tricolor Party, but lost the battle with Enrique Peña Nieto, who headed the state government from 2005 to 2011 and then ascended to the presidency.
Pastor (67 years old) was arrested at noon in one of the central neighborhoods of Toluca in the Mexican capital. Data from the National Detention Register show that the politician is already in the Santiagoito Center for Prevention and Social Adaptation, a prison located on the outskirts of the municipality. The authorities did not publish any other details, except for his arrest, about the illegal acts attributed to him.
Although the former leader left the ranks of the PRI in 2004, he maintained a certain importance in the party by being part of the state government cabinet until January 2017. At that time, he tried his luck again to achieve the nomination, but this time with an independent nomination in a district where the PRI had established a regional stronghold. The politician then ended up in the middle of a legal dispute to defend his registration and appear on the ballot. The Electoral Commission confirmed that he did not meet the conditions for ratifying his candidacy, but stated that it would still have weight if he did not succeed in passing the nomination. “Maybe I will remain on the sidelines, but my people will have an impact,” he said in an interview with this newspaper in May 2017.
With a population of nearly 17 million, the State of Mexico is the most populous region in the country, making it a key electoral laboratory for determining the direction of the overall vote in the republic. The Institutional Revolutionary Party has succeeded in transforming the country into a historical stronghold, ruling successively for more than ninety years, between 1929 and 2023. In those last elections, the Institutional Revolutionary Party showed that it was losing its muscle. Delfina Gomez (Morena) won at the ballot box with more than 50% of the votes.
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