The PRD has its origins with the leftist members of the PRI, Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI had dominated Mexican politics since its founding in 1929. In 1986, three PRI members – Rodolfo González Guevara, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas – formed the Democratic Current, a political faction within the PRI. The Democratic Current aimed to pressure the PRI to become a more democratic party and to address the issue of national debt including the social effects of the economic crisis that came from attempting to pay that debt. The Democratic Current was also against technocratization, in which the people in power had not held public office and were scholars that were often educated abroad. Under the Miguel de la Madrid presidency which lasted from 1982-1988, the PRI and Mexico were moving towards a technocracy especially since de la Madrid was a technocrat himself. The Democratic Current did not have many technocrats and was thus left out of the decision-making process. This political marginalization led the Democratic Current members to be more vocal about their concerns because they did not have a position of power to protect within the PRI.