This week, Beatriz Paredes sat down behind a modest wooden table in the Mexican desert state of Chihuahua and told a group of politicians on a training course about her vision for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party she will take over on Sunday.

“I am not thinking about the PRI of yesteryear, I am thinking about the PRI of today and of tomorrow,” said the 53-year-old, her portly figure wrapped in a traditional long white dress. “I am thinking about a competitive party in a new national political reality…in which the PRI will be able to relaunch itself for the federal elections.”