Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants, and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution. By Marjorie Becker. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 188. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. No Price.)

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-607
Author(s):  
Samuel Brunk
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas

From Desamortization to Agrarian Reform in Mexico, 1856–1940

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Tortolero Villaseñor
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Agrarian Reform ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Land Redistribution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas

The first phase of the development of land tenure in Mexico, from the desamortization laws in 1856 to agrarian reform, was completed in 1940 by the Lázaro Cárdenas administration. While between 1856 and 1910 property reforms served to concentrate land and stimulate latifundio, from the violent Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917 until 1992 a policy of social justice was implemented that sought to give land to peasant families, thereby generating a better distribution of land, though without improving its productivity. This signifies that if postrevolutionary modernity assumed, echoing neo-institutionalism or old trends such as positivism or regeneracionismo, that land redistribution was a necessary condition to generate economic growth, in reality it was the social dimension and not the economic that gave character to Mexican agrarian reform between 1920 and 1992. As a backdrop to this, the analysis of literature and history shows a truncated and limited agrarian reform in which traditional figures such as the cacique persisted. The traditional and official vision of the agrarian reform is misguided, in which it is understood as a product of restitutive justice, the result of peasants regaining the lands from which they had been evicted due to the desamortization laws and the greed of landowners hungry for land who had annexed the land of the pueblos. To the contrary, agrarian reform is distributive, allocating land to peasants who requested it, while the hacienda was not the source of all the evils that gave rise to the revolution. Nor can the situation of the Mexican countryside be portrayed as the fight of the peones against the hacendados or caciques hungry for land. This erroneous vision of the Mexican countryside should be demystified, because it does not take into account that agrarian reform became the touchstone to give an agrarian nature to a very diversified Mexican Revolution and convert it into an instrument for the postrevolutionary governments to champion the peasant struggle in 20th-century Mexico, becoming the key to economic growth and social justice in the rural Mexican world.

Ben Fallaw,Cárdenas Compromised:The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. London: Duke University Press, 2001. 222 pp.

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 211-213
Author(s):  
Wil G. Pansters
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Duke University ◽  
Corporatist State ◽  
National Bourgeoisie ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas

The presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), one of the leading figures of Latin American populism of the first half of the twentieth century, has long been surrounded by myth and politicized interpretations. To a certain extent this is understandable: under Cárdenas's leadership major and spectacular reforms were carried out that had their roots in claims originally formulated during and in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). Moreover, these reforms have had a lasting impact on Mexico's political and socioeconomic development. In state-sanctioned historia oficial the figure of “grandfather” Cárdenas long reached mythical proportions: he carried out huge projects of land reform and thus finally responded to the demands of poor peasants and Indians, stood up against international capital by nationalizing the oil industry, rebuffed the conservative factions of the national bourgeoisie and laid the foundations for the corporatist state and party, that was to rule Mexico for the remaining part of the century, and thus gave institutional voice to the country's working classes. This image has also been influential in scholarly writings, particularly in those that studied cardenismo as a national phenomenon. Recent years, however, have seen important changes. Nationalist populism is drastically reevaluated in the dominant discourse of neoliberal modernity, and scholars have started to break down the phenomenon, thereby trying to overcome politicized interpretations.

Calculating Pragmatism:The High Politics of the Banco Ejidal in Twentieth-century Mexico

2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-363
Author(s):  
Nicole Mottier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Agricultural Growth ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
High Politics ◽  
The Revolution

The battles that peasants waged during the Mexican Revolution translated into a series of agrarian and agricultural institutions, and one of these was the Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal, created in 1926. Histories deeply engrained in both the popular imagination of Mexico and scholarly historiography have offered a generic classic narrative of ejidal credit, beginning with Lázaro Cárdenas. He and his cabinet sought to transform theejidointo the engine of agricultural growth for the nation and carried out a sweeping and (in qualified ways) successful land reform, thereby bringing the revolution to the fullest fruition many Mexicans would ever know. It is assumed that ejidal credit peaked during Cárdenas's administration in two major ways: first, it was in this period that ejidal credit societies received the most loans from the Banco Nacional del Crédito Ejidal, and second, it was during the same period that the bank clearly and unanimously embraced social reform goals over orthodox banking goals.

The Modification of the Anti-Clerical Nationalism of the Mexican Revolution by General Lázaro Cárdenas and Its Relationship to the Church-State Detente in Mexico

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert L. Michaels
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The Church

The man of the Revolution disputed the very nature of Mexico with the Roman Catholic. The revolutionary, whether Callista or Cardenista, believed that the church had had a pernicious influence on the history of Mexico. He claimed that Mexico could not become a modern nation until the government had eradicated all the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic, on the other hand, was convinced that his religion was the basis of Mexico's nationality. Above all, the Catholic believed that Mexico needed a system of order. He was convinced that his faith had brought order and peace to Mexico in the colonial period, and as the faith declined, Mexico degenerated into anarchy.

Lázaro Cárdenas and Cardenismo

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Petroleum Industry ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Institutional Revolutionary Party ◽  
Revolutionary Party ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
Ruling Party

Lázaro Cárdenas served as Mexico’s president from 1934–1940. His presidency marked the end of the “Maximato,” the period in which the former president Plutarco Elías Calles exercised control. It bridged the gap between the rocky postwar years of the 1920s and the authoritarian dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that characterized the rest of the 20th century. Cárdenas is Mexico’s most studied and best remembered president. To the extent that the Mexican Revolution ever was truly radical or popular, it was during the Cárdenas presidency. Cardenismo is an amorphous term that refers both to Cárdenas’s administration and his reform agenda. Cardenistas were a diverse coalition of supporters, some who advocated his agenda and others who merely allied themselves with his administration for non-ideological reasons. Cárdenas set out to realize what he saw as the promises of the revolution: justice for workers and peasants. He distributed about twice as much land as his predecessors combined, and he promoted unionization and strikes. He famously expropriated and nationalized the petroleum industry in dramatic defense of the Mexican worker. These actions earned him enduring affection, although he did not receive universal support even among the disenfranchised while in office. Many opposed his policies, especially those tied with the project of cultural transformation whose origin came earlier, but whose objectives Cárdenas sought to support, especially secularization. Cárdenas’s “Socialist Education” project faced particularly fierce opposition, and he was forced to abandon it along with most of the anticlerical agenda after 1938. That same year, he reorganized the ruling party along corporatist lines and rebaptized it the “Party of the Mexican Revolution,” or PRM. That restructuring is largely credited with having created the conditions under which future administrations would be able to exercise authoritarian control, although this was not Cárdenas’s intention. His presidency is more noted for what it failed to accomplish than for its successes. Nevertheless, his legacy lives on, most visibly in countryside and in the political career of his son Cuahtémoc, who has for decades struggled to fulfill his father’s vision.

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