Cárdenas and the Essence of the Revolution PDF

# Cárdenas and the Essence of the Revolution ## Cárdenas Many Mexicans were impatient with the progress of the revolution in 1934. They took heart from the election of Lázaro Cárdenas to the presidency that year. Cárdenas’s revolutionary career was typical of many who worked their way quickly thro...

# Cárdenas and the Essence of the Revolution ## Cárdenas Many Mexicans were impatient with the progress of the revolution in 1934. They took heart from the election of Lázaro Cárdenas to the presidency that year. Cárdenas’s revolutionary career was typical of many who worked their way quickly through the military ranks, ultimately reaching the grade of brigadier general by the end of the first violent decade. But Cárdenas was a civilian at heart. Not an imposing figure physically, he claimed attention as a pensive, methodical man of principle and deep conviction. He had that special charismatic quality of evoking passionate enthusiasm among many and strong dislike among some. He was no run-of-the-mill politician. Supporting first Obregón and then Calles, he became, in the 1920s, a dominant force in his home state of Michoacán. Cárdenas’s objectives were genuinely radical, but he would face serious opposition from powerful interests in implementing lasting social reforms. Cárdenas’s governorship in Michoacán from 1928 to 1932 offered Mexicans a preview of what they might expect. The governor allowed himself to be confronted by the people and listened more than he spoke. He actually made important policy decisions, not on the advice of his confidants but on the direct information received from the public. During years when the national government shirked its educational responsibilities, Cárdenas opened one hundred new rural schools in Michoacán, inspected many classrooms personally, and made sure that the teachers received their salaries on time. He also encouraged the growth of labor and campesino organizations and even managed a modest redistribution of land at the state level. Throughout it all, he continued to live modestly. As the presidential elections of 1934 approached, Calles decided to throw his support behind Cárdenas, fully believing that the forty-year-old governor would follow his dictates. With the official endorsement of the Jefe Máximo, Cárdenas carried the 1933 Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) convention and easily won the presidency in July 1934. Immediately he broke with tradition as he cut his own salary in half and refused to move into the presidential mansion in Chapultepec. Instead, he kept his own modest home. Cárdenas had ## Domestic Reforms Agrarian reform, more than anything else, dominated the administration’s concern during the first few years, just as agriculture continued to be the main pillar of the economy. Since the initiation of the land redistribution program some _26 million acres_ of land had been parceled out, but the figure appeared more impressive on paper than in Mexico's rural zones. _Millions_ of Mexican campesinos still owned no land at all and felt cheated by two decades of revolutionary rhetoric. Cárdenas early made up his mind to fulfill twenty years of promises. By the time his term expired, he had distributed _49 million acres_, about _twice_ as much as all his predecessors combined. By 1940, approximately one-third of the Mexican population had received land under the agrarian reform program and about half of Mexico’s arable land was held by twenty thousand ejidos. Large cattle haciendas on arid or semiarid land remained relatively untouched by the redistribution program. Although Terrazas lands were confiscated early, many were later returned. The vast majority of the land distributed did not go to individuals or even heads of households but rather to the communal ejidos or collectives. The land was held in common by the communities, sometimes to be reapportioned to individuals for their use and sometimes to be worked by the community as a whole. The largest and most important of the ejidos dating from the Cárdenas redistribution was the huge Laguna cotton ejido, some _8 million acres_ on the Coahuila-Durango border. The _30,000_ families that worked the Laguna collective cooperatively engaged primarily in the cultivation of long-staple cotton but also grew large amounts of wheat, alfalfa, and maize for commercial sale. Most of the families also held small individual plots on which they grew their own subsistence crops. But the Laguna experiment consisted of much more than the mere redistribution of land. Government-supported schools were established, social services in the area were extended, and a modern ejido hospital was built in Torreón, in the center of the Laguna operation. Modernized technologies and attempts to conserve water achieved mixed results at Laguna. Paradoxically, in the long run, the management of water undermined redistribution and culminated in contaminating water and favoring developers. Although the Laguna ejido was the biggest single cooperative land venture initiated by Cárdenas, other large ejidos were established in Yucatán, Baja California, Sonora, Chiapas, and Michoacán. These ventures required large-scale financing, and for this reason the administration founded the Banco de Crédito Ejidal. During the Cárdenas years, this agrarian bank made loans available to some _thirty-five hundred_ ejidos. The ejido was no economic or social panacea, however. A rapid population growth in rural Mexico tended to offset early increases in production, and the Banco de Crédito Ejidal did not possess sufficient capital to meet the continually growing demands. In addition, much favoritism and some corruption circumscribed the distribution of ejido loans. The production of many ejidos, even Laguna, which received adequate loans from the agrarian bank, declined. Cotton production fell by almost _nine thousand_ tons from 1936 to 1938, and henequen production on the new Yucatecan ejidos dropped by _forty-five thousand_ tons during the same period. Was the ejido program then a failure? The economists answered yes, but Cárdenas had embarked upon the ejido program to meet a social need. Critics harshly denounced cooperative agriculture, but they could not deny the fact that Cárdenas’ dedication to agrarian ## Percentage of Land Distribution by Administration, 1915-40 Reform diminished the power of the traditional hacienda complex in many parts of Mexico. _Millions_ of campesinos benefitted from land apportionments although sometimes insufficiently. The type of servitude that had bound hacendado and campesinos for centuries was broken by 1940. Life in rural Mexico scarcely became idyllic as a result. Per capita income, infant mortality, and indeed life expectancy lagged behind that of the cities; but the gap in the quality of life between rural and urban Mexico began to decrease for the first time. The government organized campesino leagues into the National Campesino Confederation (CNS) making it the base of agrarian support in the official party. Cárdenas’s land reform program fared best in areas that sustained large campesino mobilizations, especially in cases where indigenous and mestizo campesinos had resisted land takeovers aggressively. In other local situations, for example Yucatán and Puebla, landowners both Mexican and foreign, worked with local officials to derail changes. Land reform was the clarion call of the revolution, not only in the distribution of ejidal property but also in the management of the montes, wilderness or forestlands. Montes were ## Cárdenas and the Church The relationship between the Cárdenas administration and the church was mixed. The president was an anticleric; during his campaign, in the state of Tabasco, he declared, “Man should not put his hope in the supernatural. Every moment spent on one’s knees is a moment stolen from humanity.” When the PNR met in 1933 to nominate Cárdenas for the presidency, it adopted a platform that, among other things, called for the teaching of socialist doctrine in the primary and secondary schools. A new curriculum had previously been developed by the secretary of education, Narciso Bassols, one that incorporated sexual education. Vociferous opposition from the church succeeded in getting the government to back down somewhat on sex education but not on socialist ideals. No full-scale Cristero-like revolt erupted, but smaller, local militant Catholic movements were active in thwarting implementation of parts of the reform program. At the same time, the activities of Catholic lay organizations gathered new steam in the area of socioeconomic welfare. Catholic women, in particular, expanded their efforts to improve conditions for women and children, with an emphasis on Catholic education and moral reform of families. Cárdenas significantly increased federal expenditures for education and although more Mexicans learned to read and write, population growth outpaced the educational budget, foiling the attempt to decrease the overall illiteracy rate. The president believed that a socialist education program would serve to foment cultural nation building and to modernize rural society. Beyond the basic curriculum, teachers were expected to help organize people in the countryside in campesino leagues or trade unions and to offer practical training. Scientific approaches to farming, for example, could provide material benefits. Women received instruction to promote public health and raise their children as part of the revolutionary family. The government also promoted Women’s Leagues for Social Struggle to encourage civic and secular activism designed to create a multiethnic, multicultural nationalism based on the promise of social justice and development. Civic patriotic fiestas competed with traditional religious celebrations. In response, indigenous and campesino communities, often ## Children and Cultural Nationalism Beginning with the leadership of José Vasconcelos in the Ministry of Education under Calles, art became a particular focus of children’s education. As the muralist movement was central to defining the national esthetic, art education, beginning at the elementary level, taught students across Mexico to draw and paint using revolutionary symbols and history as the basis of the instruction. The children’s magazine Pulgarcito published the art work of students and functioned as a pedagogical tool. Intended to serve all Mexican children, the magazine paid lip service to indigenismo while focusing primarily on urban society. Subsequent efforts to create cultural consciousness and involve children in nation building included puppet theater, radio programming, and peer literacy initiatives. To strengthen labor mobilization President Cárdenas chose a new vehicle. Annoyed at the deep-seated corruption that had beset organized labor under Luis Morones, the president supported Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a one-time CROM lieutenant, in his effort to form a new national union. More intellectually oriented than Luis Morones, Lombardo Toledano embraced the Marxist ideas of class struggle and aspired to unite all Mexican workers in a trade union powerful enough to ensure their fight for collective bargaining and improved standards of living. Lombardo Toledano succeeded in joining together some _three thousand_ unions and _six hundred thousand_ workers to form what became in _1936_ the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). The CTM made Lombardo Toledano its secretary-general, and although Cárdenas did not give the secretary-general a government position, he pledged to support his efforts although he forcefully opposed Toledano’s efforts to integrate campesino organizations in the CTM. Within _two years_ the membership had passed _one million_. Lombardo Toledano went on to organize the Latin American Confederation of Workers and to participate in anti-fascist popular front movements. The CTM in its capacity as spokesman for Mexican workers engaged in many different activities. It sponsored health and sanitation projects and organized a series of sports and recreational programs. Most important, the union addressed the inequitable wage structure of the country. A survey in _1930_ had estimated that the minimum daily wage on which a head of household might adequately support his family was _four pesos_ and revealed, at the same time, that the average minimum wage in Mexico was _one peso, six centavos_. As ## Nationalization of Oil Companies Without question Cárdenas’s most dramatic encounter during his six-year presidential term was the oil controversy with the United States, a matter that had ostensibly been resolved by his predecessors. The dispute began, innocently enough, as a conflict between labor and management within the petroleum industry. In _1936_ Mexican workers struck for higher wages and better working conditions. While the oil workers were paid quite well in comparison to other Mexican laborers, the oil companies were extracting huge profits from the country and refused to negotiate seriously with union representatives. Worse yet, company policies more often than not demeaned the Mexican worker. To many, little had changed since the miners struck Colonel Greene’s Cananea Consolidated Copper Company in _1906_. As the strike in the oil industry began to weaken the Mexican economy, President Cárdenas ordered that the dispute be settled by an industrial arbitration board. The board examined the records of the companies and the living conditions of the workers and issued a decision ordering an increase in wages by one-third and an improved pension and welfare system. The companies, claiming that the order meant an increase in operating costs of over _$7 million_, appealed the decision to the Mexican Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld the original decision of the arbitration board. When the foreign-owned companies refused to obey the Supreme Court decision in its entirety, President Cárdenas held that they had flagrantly defied the sovereignty of the Mexican state and on _March 18, 1938_, signed a decree nationalizing the holdings of _seventeen_ oil companies that became the foundation of Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). The nationalization decree became an immediate cause célèbre. Cárdenas received congratulatory telegrams from many other Latin American heads of state. Beginning in the Maximato, Mexico had endeavored to cultivate better relations with other Latin American countries that sometimes viewed Mexico (and not just the United States) as meddling in their affairs. In _1930_, Genaro Estrada, the foreign minister, established a major principle of Mexico's foreign policy. The Estrada Doctrine proclaimed the right to self-determination of all nations and argued against the intervention of foreign governments in sovereign nations. These principles were widely embraced throughout Latin America and allowed Latin American countries to challenge the United States in Pan-American and Inter-American conferences. Cárdenas's Foreign Minister Eduardo Hay continued to espouse non-interventionism while he fomented cultural diplomacy across the Americas and the world through cultural exchanges of art, music, and sports. Nationalism also evoked the patriotism of the vast majority of Mexicans. In anticipation of the compensation Mexico would have to pay for the expropriation, Mexicans lined up to offer donations: school children offered their lunch money and women their jewels. Even Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the young son of the president, offered the contents of his piggy bank to the cause. A few days after the decree was signed, a huge celebration was held in Mexico City to honor the bold move for economic independence. ## A Change in Orientation Shortly after the expropriation Cárdenas decided to alter the structure of the PNR which Calles had created in _1929_. Realizing that Mexico was embarking upon difficult economic times, the president wanted an even more broadly based national party and for that reason established the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano (PRM), on a corporatist model that provided the umbrella for various sectors of society: military, labor, agrarian, and popular. The party, and Cárdenas as its supreme leader, aspired to be the ultimate arbiter of social conflicts. As the official party was all-inclusive, it should encounter little opposition in state or national elections. It used patriotic holidays and the media to inculcate the idea that it represented the interests of all deserving Mexicans, who would enjoy solidarity and benefits of membership in the revolutionary family. Nonetheless, the federal government was not all powerful; it functioned through shifting alliances with social sectors and regional power brokers to advance policies of economic nationalism and expand programs to incorporate marginalized groups. Powerful opposition from the church, industrialists (especially the Monterrey Group), landowners, and provincial elites had at various times and in different places, blocked or blunted policies considered too radical and antithetical to their interests. Eventually, many of these interests would join the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN), founded in _1939_ to oppose anti-clericalism. ## International Anti-Fascism International anti-fascism at first hindered the PAN’s growth, as the Mexican government moved to accept Spanish refugees fleeing from Francisco Franco’s fascist regime and to eliminate Falangist pro-Nazi groups in Mexico. Cárdenas not only accepted thousands of Spanish exiles, but also gave asylum to the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. In _1938_ the leftist revolution began to lose some of its thrust and, in retrospect, the oil expropriations climaxed the socialist and nationalist orientation of Cárdenas’s program. The president’s last two years were characterized by economic difficulty. PEMEX, inheriting antiquated machinery and a lack of trained technicians got off to a shaky start. The situation worsened when Cárdenas learned that he could not buy spare parts for equipment in the ## World War II World War II broke out in Europe while Lázaro Cárdenas was in the last year of his term, and the president left it to his successor to define Mexico’s position. After the Russo-German nonaggression pact of _1939_, both the Mexican left led by Lombardo Toledano and Múgica, and the right, led by Almazán, adopted a pro-German position. But when in the summer of _1941_ Hitler broke his promises and ordered the German army toward Moscow and Leningrad, the Mexican left could no longer support the Axis cause. President Avila Camacho enunciated an unmistakably pro-Allied course of action, and only a few Mexican fascists and neo-fascists failed to support him. One day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. Most Mexicans were satisfied that breaking diplomatic relations was sufficient and that the ultimate step of declaring war was unnecessary. The United States and Mexico appointed members to a joint defense board, and Avila Camacho deported German, Italian, and Japanese diplomats from Mexico. In _March 1942_, when the president participated in the opening of the new Benjamin Franklin Library in Mexico City, he pointed to the stark cultural contrast between free societies that valued books and the Nazis who burned them. But Mexico would not have entered the war had not Germany forced its hand. On the night of _May 14_ a German submarine operating in the Caribbean torpedoed and sank the Potrero de Llano, a Mexican tanker that was fully lighted and properly identified. On _May 24_ a second Mexican tanker, the Faja de Oro, was torpedoed. Thereupon the president went before the congress and announced that, although Mexico had tried to avoid war, the country could ## Mexican Involvement in World War II No longer accept dishonor passively. He asked for and, without serious debate, received his declaration of war. Furthermore, as wartime propaganda shows, Mexico’s involvement provided an opportunity for the government to deemphasize revolutionary ideology in favor of democratic idealism and to discourage opposition. Wartime cooperation with the United States went a long way to repair ties in the previously strained relationship between the two neighbors. On _September 16, 1942_, on the _132nd_ anniversary of the Grito de Dolores, an amazing and unprecedented display of camaraderie occurred on the balcony of the National Palace. Six former presidents-Adolfo de la Huerta, Plutarco Elías Calles (invited to return from the United States), Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, Abelardo Rodríguez, and Lázaro Cárdenas-linked arms with Avila Camacho to indicate that past antagonisms had been forgotten and that Mexico was fully united in time of war. Secretary of Interior Miguel Alemán was charged with eliminating subversive activity within the national boundaries. Once a stiff espionage act passed the congress, he began seizing German, Italian, and Japanese properties including banks, drug firms, hardware stores, and coffee plantations to prevent them from being used as bases of propaganda or espionage. Intelligence and national security were delegated to the military, a move that allayed officers’ dissatisfaction with cuts to the armed forces budget. The ideal of a professionalized, apolitical military gave way to a relationship in which an ethos of deference to civilian government did not always eliminate military influence on the state. Alemán’s secret service rooted out several Gestapo agents and other spies operating clandestine ## Mexican laborers (braceros) Radio stations and relaying instructions to German submarines in the Atlantic. Japanese immigrants to Mexico (who had been arriving as labors since the late nineteenth century), were spared some of the horrors of the mass incarceration that occurred in the United States. However, over one hundred thousand were forced into internment camps and lost their property as well as their individual liberty. They encountered marked hostility in northern Mexico where anti-Asian prejudices had been responsible for attacks on Chinese immigrants earlier in the century. In some southern states where Japanese Mexicans had been integrated into communities, their neighbors defended them. But many, not only first generation, were detained for periods and then released while others were deported. Mexico’s valuable oil fields and munitions factories were placed under strict military control. Some modernization of the Mexican army occurred as it received military supplies through the Lend-Lease program of the United States. The Avila Camacho administration also moved to provide a small military contingent for service with the Allies. The members of the joint defense board decided that Air Force Squadron 201 should be prepared for duty in the Far East. Approximately 300 Mexican aviators and support personnel received their training in the United States and were assigned to the Fifth Air Corps in the Philippines. Using the P47 Thunderbolt as its operating aircraft, Squadron 201 participated in bombing and strafing raids in the Philippines and Formosa in early _1945_, and some Mexicans lost their lives. After the war the squadron received commendations from General Douglas MacArthur and a hero’s welcome upon return to Mexico. More important than token military support, Mexico provided strategic war materials for the Allied war effort. Zinc, copper, lead, mercury, graphite, and cadmium flowed into US war plants and were transformed into military products. The increased demand for these raw materials could have caused prices to soar, but the Mexican government instituted price controls as further testimony to its cooperation. The most unique, and ultimately the most controversial, contribution to the war effort was the mutual decision made by Avila Camacho and Franklin D. Roosevelt to allow Mexican laborers (braceros) to serve as agricultural workers in the United States. The draft in the United States had depleted the workforce, and Mexicans picked up the slack as they began to harvest major crops. The terms of the carefully spelled out agreement authorized workers to receive free transportation to and from their homes, forbade them from displacing US workers or to be used to suppress wages, set minimum wages at _46_ cents an hour (later raised to _57_ cents), and authorized Mexican labor officials to make periodic inspections to certify that the rules were being enforced. By the spring of _1943_, despite the opposition of organized labor in the United States, the program expanded to include nonagricultural labor as well. When the war ended, approximately three hundred thousand Mexicans had worked in _twenty-five_ different states, some as far north as Minnesota and Wisconsin. Problems arose in the program, for the regulations were not always enforced and the workers encountered deep-seated prejudices in the United States. Yet braceros often built networks of solidarity internally and sought transnational support, among other strategies that allowed them to define their own racial and behavioral norms. ## Industrialization Although it would be an exaggeration to suggest that its support during World War II materially influenced the outcome, nevertheless Mexico made a more substantial contribution than any other Latin American country. Moreover, the war was of singular importance for Mexico’s internal development. It marked improved relations with the United States and an acceleration of the country’s economic development even as agricultural production declined. Wartime shortages in the United States and Europe deprived Mexico of its normal sources of imported manufactured goods and convinced even the doubters of the need for industrialization. The goal was not simply to meet the demands of the domestic market but to produce a surplus of manufactured goods for export to other Latin American countries. Even during the last years of the Cárdenas administration, Mexican social scientists had begun to argue the absurdity of dividing the same pie into smaller and smaller pieces. To provide a better life for the vast majority of the people, it was imperative that the country’s economic base be expanded through a major program of industrialization. The program not only would provide additional employment for a rapidly growing population but also, through increased productivity, generate wealth and improve the standard of living for the masses. To foster industrial expansion the Avila Camacho administration established the Nacional Financiera, a government-owned bank created primarily to provide loans to industry but also to oversee the industrial process. In each year of the administration the favorable loans of the Nacional Financiera increased dramatically, reaching a total of _286.8 million pesos_ by 1945. In addition, other incentives, such as tax exemptions and tariff protection, persuaded potential investors to take acceptable risks. With the CTM in the hands of Fidel Velásquez, he readily pledged his support to the new industrialists. Native Mexican capital began to pour into new industrial pursuits but, because the program was such an ambitious one, in _1944_ the congress passed legislation allowing foreign participation in industrialization with the proviso that Mexican capital own the controlling stock in any mixed corporation. Some US investors jumped at the opportunity. The Export-Import Bank in the United States also extended credits. The new and often young industrialists took it upon themselves to educate Mexican politicians, and indeed the public, in the virtues of industrial growth. In _1942_ they founded the Cámara Nacional de la Industria de Transformación to develop an industrial consciousness in the country and to convince policymakers that without industrialization the masses were doomed to perpetual privation. During the Avila Camacho years industrialization dominated the front pages of newspapers. The Cámara became an effective propaganda agency and lobby, arguing that what was good for industry was good for the nation. Its initial goal was to foster those industries that relied on Mexican raw materials, for example, cereal processing, edible oil from agricultural products, sugar, alcohol, and the manufacture of fibers and chemicals. The ultimate goal was to export manufactured goods. The industrial push gathered momentum throughout the war years as a wide range of old industries were expanded and new ones initiated. The textile, food-processing, chemical, beer, and cement industries grew rapidly Pig iron production increased from _99,200_ metric tons in _1930_ to _240,300_ in _1946_, and during the same period steel nearly doubled from _142,200_ metric tons to _257,900_. Electrical capacity rose by _20_ percent, and the industrial proletariat grew steadily in size. As predicted, industrialization generated new wealth. The national income almost tripled, from _6.4 billion pesos_ in _1940_ to _18.6 billion_ in _1945_. Per capita income jumped from _325 pesos_ the year Avila Camacho was inaugurated to _838 pesos_ during his last year in office. As social critics quickly pointed out, however, increased per capita income for a growing middle class did not necessarily mean a more equitable distribution of wealth or increased earning power for the poor. Furthermore, tax exemptions for investors were part of a more general weakness in the tax structure, which produced insufficient revenue. The post-Cárdenas period had moved away from social justice economics. The agrarian revolution languished. Productivity on most of the ejidos had not lived up to expectations, and government planners decided not to experiment further with communal agriculture. This certainly did nothing to alleviate social unrest in rural areas. The agrarian movement led by Rubén Jaramillo in Morelos attracted supporters, but its efforts were increasingly met by government repression. For almost a decade the official party had gradually opened up. By _1946_ it was no longer dominated by intellectuals, agrarian reformers, and ardent defenders of the labor movement. It now represented the business and industrial communities as well as economists and technicians. To symbolize the change without giving up the revolutionary myth, in _1946_ the party decided to change its name to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional/Party of the Institutionalized Revolution (PRI). The party was organized on a corporatist structure of interest groups: campesinos, urban labor, and a more amorphous sector of middle-class organizations. For a still relatively weak federal government to rule through this single party, its leaders undertook frequent negotiations and crafted shifting alliances not only with the constituent groups on a national level, but also with local, regional, and state officials and interests. Although the old caudillismo had disappeared, state leaders like Puebla governor Maximino Ávila Camacho (brother of the president) could still exert influence on national decision making. The authoritarian tendencies of local leaders could inhibit the implementation of national policies, but they could also be used to carry them out. The power of the state had increased under Cárdenas, but it did not become a Leviathan that subordinated the popular classes and civil society. Agrarian and labor reforms had delivered benefits to millions of Mexico’s campesinos and workers, explaining why Cárdenas is still a national icon. In terms of economic nationalism, Cárdenas nationalized the oil industry and completed the nationalization of the railways. His policies had provided an opening for industrialization and economic development, promoting a capitalist bourgeoisie that even benefitted from state intervention. This trend continued vigorously under Avila Camacho. Again, in Alan Knight’s words: “… the jalopy was hijacked by new drivers; they returned the engine, took on new passengers and then drove it in quite a different direction.” This is the end of the text on the first page, it looks like it may continue on another page!