The National Action Party (PAN) of Calderon, who’s taken up a fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, “should be concerned by the arrest” of Gordillo, Duncan Wood, the head of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wrote in an analysis.

Calderon did nothing to limit Gordillo despite her ostentatious display of wealth at the expense of the dues-paying union members.

“This fact not only discredited the PAN in the eyes of the public, but it also made the party prey to accusations of failing to take on the nation’s vested interests,” Wood wrote.

Gordillo has plenty of dirt on politicians across the political spectrum, and some analysts worried that her eventual successor in the teachers’ union would follow in her footsteps.

“Let’s see if they create another little monster,” said Carlos Loret de Mola, a popular television news anchor and activist for educational reform.

“The great risk is that the PRI recovers control of the union leadership and uses it again for electoral purposes as it has done in the past,” said Monica Tapia, a political analyst who’s a founder of the Citizens’ Coalition for Education. “It’s a good moment for the teachers’ union to democratize. But the Gordian knot is that the union controls the teachers’ jobs. . . . Teachers live under the yoke of their leaders.”

She said she didn’t anticipate the Pena Nieto government getting control of the union – and the hiring and firing of teachers – for another year or two.