[8] The party has previously taken stances on issues not usually associated with the international Green movement such as support for capital punishment, extension of school hours, and opposition to LGBT rights.

It participated in the 1991 federal elections for the first time as an independent bloc, under the name Ecologist Party of Mexico (Spanish: Partido Ecologista de México).

From when it obtained its first subnational registration as a political party on 28 February 1991 until 2011, it was controlled by a single family: its first president was founder Jorge González Torres (a public official and former member of the PRI), who was succeeded in the presidency of the party by his son, Jorge Emilio González Martínez (who served as a senator from 2000–2006 and was nicknamed "the Green Child") in 2001.

In the 2009 Mexican legislative election, the party campaigned in favor of the death penalty for murderers and kidnappers, the extension of school hours to relieve childcare concerns for working parents, and free medicines.

[12] Later, in the 2012 general election, the PRI-PVEM alliance's presidential candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, was victorious, with the PVEM improving its results in the legislature (taking 34 seats in the Chamber of Deputies out of 500 and nine seats in the Senate out of 128)[13] and entering into a state government for the first time as part of a coalition with the PRI and PANAL in Chiapas, also winning the governorship for the first time under candidate Manuel Velasco Coello.

More than 155,000 Mexicans signed an online petition calling for the INE to revoke the Green party's registration, but Mexico's electoral tribunal declined to do so.

[14] PVEM later withdrew from Todos por Mexico and gradually came close to the Andrés Manuel López Obrador government, formally entering the Juntos Haremos Historia coalition in 2019.

[15] In December 2020 it founded the successor Juntos Hacemos Historia coalition, together with the National Regeneration Movement and the Labor Party and contested the 2021 Mexican legislative elections with them.

The party has been criticized on a few occasions for a perceived lack of true commitment to environmental causes,[20] with the now-defunct Mexico City newspaper El Independiente reporting that during a meeting he held in London with Mexican graduate students, party leader Jorge González Martínez responded to the question of PVEM's programs in defense of the Mexican environment with "Ecology is the least important thing to me.

A 2004 video of Jorge Emilio Gonzalez appears to show him negotiating a payment in exchange for developing a hotel in Cancun on ecologically sensitive lands.

[12] Green Party Senator Arturo Escobar y Vega was stopped in a Chiapas airport prior to the 2009 elections "with $1 million pesos in a Louis Vuitton bag", but denied the money was his and was released.

[35] In 2021, a similar incident occurred, and several influencers were fined for illegal posts in favor of PVEM on social media after the period of campaigning had ended.