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Lázaro Cárdenas and his Legacy

Lázaro Cárdenas and his Legacy. Modern Mexico, Monday 6 February 2012 . General Cardenas, during the Escobar rebellion, 1929. Early 1930s: the end of the Revolution ?.

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Lázaro Cárdenas and his Legacy

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  1. Lázaro Cárdenas and his Legacy • Modern Mexico, • Monday 6 February 2012

  2. General Cardenas, during the Escobar rebellion, 1929

  3. Early 1930s: the end of the Revolution ? • Late 1920s until the mid 1930s, with stalling of social reform, US “pilgrims” commentaries on Mexico became much more critical and pessimistic. • Delpar in The Enormous Vogue shows how US interest in Mexico shifted from social policies of the Revolution, to the cultural area - murals, music, film, etc..- where creativity was still evident. • Eyler Simpson, The Ejido, Mexico’s Way Out (1937) observes how the stalling of reform coincided with renewal of close relations with US with appointment of Dwight Morrow as ambassador in September 1927.

  4. Eyler Simpson, The Ejido, Mexico’s Way Out 1937 “…coincident with Morrow’s presence in Mexico the life went out of the revolution…maybe the revolutionary movement had already run its course. On the other hand it may be that the kindly, sympathetic, well-intentioned, subtly flattering, former Morgan (Bank) partner, by trying to help Mexico put her house in order and to settle everything up in a ship-shape, businesslike fashion, succeeded in putting the breaks on the only real reform movement in the history of the country. It is difficult to conduct a revolution on book-keeping principles… ‘God save us from the friendship of the United States’…contains a deal of wisdom…”.

  5. George Biddle, Shot by Bandits 1929

  6. Jose Clemente Orozco, Tourists and Aztecs 1928

  7. Election of Lazaro Cardenas in 1934 • In 1934, following Cardenas’s election to the Presidency as Calles’ preferred candidate, perceptions swiftly changed… • rapid acceleration of land reform • Rapid expansion of socialist education • Mushrooming of labour disputes and strikes backed by the government

  8. Lazaro Cardenas del Rio (1895-1970) - From small town of Jiquilpan, Michoacán (1st president not from the North since 1911 - lower middle class background, left school at eleven, set upon becoming a school teacher until joining the revolution after Victoriano Huerta’s coup in 1913-14 ....became a General. - loyalty to Calles was rewarded with state governorship of Michoacán 1928-1932: showed agrarian and socialist sympathies admired for keeping most of state out of Cristero War and curtailing repression of Cristeros following the 1929 arreglos (Michoacán suffered no “Segunda Cristiada”) (see Salvador Lemus Fernández, 'A Convention in Zacapu', in Joseph and Henderson (eds) The Mexico Reader), - by nature a populist (Russian/LA hybrid), a peace-maker and nation-state builder....

  9. World crisis of 1930s - 1929 Stock Market Crash and slump - mass unemployment in US and Europe - Liberal capitalism under scrutiny: state intervention becomes the orthodoxy - Mexico under Calles and PNR since 1924 had become a personalist/caudillist fiefdom, with caciques controlling politics on the local level (much as under Diaz) - early 1930s, some signs of shift to Left: - reform to article 27 to allow “peonesacasillados” to bid for land - Bassols’ Socialist education, as a channel for venting the anti-clericalism of the Revolution, yet more rhetoric than substance

  10. Cardenas presidency, 1934-1940 - Calles entrusted succession to Cardenas expecting more of the same... - Cardenas responded by applying labour and agrarian laws and by transforming PNR from a personalist/caudillist into a corporatist PRM (1942 becomes PRI) - Six tumultous years and Mexico of 1940 differed markedly from Mexico of 1934 - By 1940 Mexico had become, in Brian Hamnett’s view, “a curious hybrid of Fascist Italy and the Soviet Union but without either the Fascism or the Socialism” What was the background to Cardenas’s “re-starting” of the revolution ?

  11. The Depression: popular expectations • Mexico’s foreign trade fell by 2/3 between 1929-32 • Gross Domestic Product declined by 16% • between 1890-1929 1.5 million Mexican entered US to work in agriculture, mining, the railroads and heavy industry (particularly steel). • 1929-32, 300,000 returnee migrants from the United States had to be re-accommodated in Mexico’s towns and villages • see Paul Taylor, A Spanish Mexican Peasant Community Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico (1933),for return of migrants from the US becoming “agraristas”, Anne Craig, The First Agraristas An Oral History of the MexAgr Ref Movt.

  12. Arandas (Altos de Jalisco), typical peasant household: source of migration to US during the 1920a & return migration during the 1930s

  13. Early 1930s: political drift • Although Calles nominally in charge, “maximato” regimes were rent by internal factionalism and disagreement on how to respond to the Depression • CROM loses influence to more radical labour organisations: workers turned to CGOCM (General Confederation of Mexican Peasants and Workers) organised by Vicente Lombardo Toledano and to CSUM (Confederacion Sindical Unitaria de Mexico) linked to the Communist Party • PNR f. in 1928 aimed to mediate conflicts between ruling class and popular sectors, yet had little control in most areas of the country……

  14. The Depression: Government Response • In spite of stalled reforms, legislation proceeded during the early 1930s: • 1931 labour Article 123 of 1917 Constit. was finally enacted and Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration set up. • 1932, formerly excluded hacienda peons now entitled to bid for ejidos through Article 27: massive new entitlement sealed fate of the great hacienda • 1933, Socialist Education launched to encourage collectivist principles and combat religious fanaticism. (Strand’s film “Redes” formed part of this crusade) • 1933 Five Year Plan launched opening spate of state intervention and nationalisation .

  15. Paul Strand and Fred Zinnerman’s “Redes”, 1933 • 1932 Minister of Education NarcisoBassols launches socialist programme and contracts US photographer Paul Strand to make consciousness raising film “Redes” • 1933 Presid. Abelardo Rodriguez contracts Paul O’Higgins, Marion Greenwood and team of US radical painters to decorate walls of an ex-convent, now market in Mexico City centre

  16. Return of Land, Modotti, 1926

  17. Return of Land, Modotti, 1926

  18. American artists at the Abelardo Rodriguez market in Mexico City, 1934

  19. Marion Greenwood, Industrialization of the Countryside 1935.

  20. Marion Greenwood, Mining 1935

  21. The Cacique, Abelardo Rodriguez Market, 1934

  22. The Cacique, Abelardo Rodriguez Market, 1934

  23. Myth of Lazaro Cardenas • -Cardenas still commands great affection among Mexicans of all classes • - main Left opposition (PRD) in 1980s & 90s headed by Cuautemoc C. • -his regime cited as proof that the Revolution once lived, even if later it died .... • - meaning of Revolution of 1910 is harder to fathom, accounting for “volcano”, “windstorm” (vendeval), “la bola” (brawl), analogies,.. • - Cardenismo, by contrast, evokes a potent combination of radical educational reform, indigenismo, labour and agrarian reform, in a context of heightened nationalism associated with the expropriation of the foreign owned oil companies, the railways, electrical utilities and telecommunications.....

  24. Cardenas regime: periodisation • Period of rapid radical reform was brief: oil expropriation in 1938 was a watershed • Three periods: • Dec 1934-April 1936 consolidation of progressive forces with defeat of Callistas.... • April 1936-December 1937, highpoint of radical reform • 1938-40, growth opposition and resurgence of Conservatives within PRM (See John Sherman, “Reassessing Cardenismo”)

  25. Cardenas announces Oil expropriation, 18 March 1938

  26. Mexican women contribute jewellery and fowls to oil expropriation

  27. Alan Knight, “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy ?”* • Knight asks: • How radical ? …real break with Sonoran tradition of top down reform ? • How strong was the regime ? Was it up to achieving its goals and facing resistance ? • What were its achievements and legacy ? • *Journal of Latin American Studies 26, 1, 1994, 73-109.

  28. Cardenismo: Marxists/Revisionists • Revisionist views: • Marxists: - however radical in intent, Cardenas’s reforms laid the foundation for the “institutionalised revolution” (the PRI) which became after 1940 an engine for capitalist development and accumulation. - under Cardenas popular movements were co-opted and subordinated to the state. • - the redistribution of wealth resulting from agrarian reform and labour gains deepened the market to the benefit of capital accumulation. • See Arturo Anguiano “Cardenas and the Masses”, Mexico Reader457-460

  29. Anguiano “Cardenas and the Masses” • “The new governing forces headed by Lázaro Cardenas knew that the class struggle was bound to worsen. They therefore considered it necessary to guide the mass movement of workers and peasants by winning their support and orienting their struggles so as to strengthen the state, giving it power that it could use to foment the country’s industrial development...”

  30. Cardenismo: statists • Statists: • see 1934-40 as Mexico’s entry into mass politics (política de masas) • - agree that masses were subordinated to the state but there is debate over the relative autonomy of the state (ie autonomy from “capitalism”) • - most “statists” credit Cardenas with an ingenious feat of durable state building, after the personalism, caudillismo, bossism and corruption of the Calles period. e.g. Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy

  31. Statists • Chief statist: Arnaldo Cordoba, La política de masas del cardenismo. (1974) : • “El Pueblo se organizaba y, a su vez, organizaba al Estado” • (“The People became organized and, at the same time, organised the state” ) • Nora Hamilton also favours a view of relative autonomy of the state: The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton, 1982)

  32. Cardenismo: statists • weighing top-down, bottom-up factors, Warwick PhD, David (Dawn) Raby, sees Cardenismo as period of corporatism with selective mobilisation rather than mass mobilisation of itself. • Cardenas encouraged people to take the initiative, leaving him to decide, on pragmatic grounds (depending on the balance of local, regional, national and international forces) who merited support ..

  33. Cardenismo: statists • David (Dawn) Raby argues that at first Cardenismo was an open-ended process.... • after 1938 foreign and domestic pressures cause radical policies to be reigned back.. • Liisa North & David Raby, “The Dynamics of Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Mexico under Cardenas, 1934-1940”, Latin America Research Units Studies Vol.2, 1977

  34. Cardenismo: statists • Above all, Raby sees Cardenas as “real author of Mexican presidentialism”…. • The change in name of the ruling party from PNR to PRM in 1938 was not of simply of form but substance • Cardenas responsible for creation of “essentially totalitarian concept of government based on the identity of four concepts: nation, revolution, party and government” • Raby: “a mature corporate state, albeit a relatively mild one which avails itself of a populist and democratic ideology in order to legitimise its procedures” • system cannot be understood in Liberal terms • David Raby, “Mexican political and Social development since 1920” Canadian Journal of Latin American Studies I, 1975, 24-45

  35. other views of Cardenas • as “a fox in a Franciscan habit” (“un zorro con sayalfranciscano”), fits with Jose Vasconcelos’ vision in 1920 of the revival of the ideal of early Franciscan missionaries • others stress his autocratic role as the “amo y señor de Mexico” (the “ruler and lord of Mexico”), with the state becoming a “burgeoning leviathan”, “a juggernaut driven by a determined driver”... • Others stress the radical content and transforming goals.....the negation of Callismo....see AdoldoGilly, La RevoluciónInterumpida (1972), written in jail after student repression of 1968, who sees Cardenismo as a genuinely radical second wave of Revolution. • this belief inspired “neo-cardenismo”, radical opposition to the PRI led by Lazaro Cardenas’s son Cuautemoc, head of the PRD from the late 1980s....

  36. Alan Knight’s view • argues that Cardenas presided over “a genuinely radical movement promising substantial change” commanding “substantial popular support”. • because of this radicalism, Cardenismo faced severe resistance from diverse sectors of society curtailing its freedom of manoevre and limiting its practical accomplishments... • concludes that Cardenismo was “less powerful, speedy, capable of following proposed route than supposed...more a jalopy than a juggernaut”

  37. Lecture structure: • - Cardenismo in the provinces: the revolutionary school • - Agrarian reform • - Cardenas and Organised labour • - Capitalists fight back • - The 1940 elections

  38. Neo-Gramschian/Post-Revisionist historiography, 1980-2000s • Influenced by Frank Tannenbaum’s “populist” view of the Mexican Revolution evident in Peace by Revolution (1932) and inspired by Alan Knight’s Mexican Revolution 2 Vols • Scholars such as Mary Kay Vaughan, Elise Rockwell, Stephen Lewis, Benjamin Smith focus on how the social programmes of the Revolution were received in the provinces. • Key book: Joseph, Gilbert and Daniel Nugent (eds), Everyday Forms of State Formation Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Duke, 1994)

  39. Cardenismo in the provinces: Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca • Benjamin Smith explores Cardenas’s positive response to local initiative: federal support enables progressive young village Democrats – school teachers - in the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca to form their own regional confederation, hitherto blocked by conservative native village elders (caciques)….. • “ ‘Defending our Beautiful Freedom’: State Formation and Local Autonomy in Oaxaca, 1930-1940”, Mexican Studies, 23, 1, 2007, 125-153

  40. Cardenismo in the provinces: Yaquis of Sonora and Nahuas of the Sierra de Puebla • Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930-40 1997 • documents similar Cardenista responsiveness to local popular pressures from the Yaquis pueblos in Sonora, for return of land and requests for removal of non-Yaqui speakers acting as school teachers. • In the Sierra de Puebla, Cardenismo builds on 19th C tradition of popular Liberalism, Xochiapulco (Nahua cacique Juan Francisco Lucas’s stronghold) becoming a regional centre for indigenous education during the 1920s and 30s.....

  41. Cardenismo in the provinces: Chiapas Central Highlands • Stephen Lewis explores Cardenas’s support for similar initiatives in the Ttzotzil Highlands of Chiapas to establish a network of Indian schools, free of mestizo control….some progress made until 1940 when the programme is rolled back • “A Window into the Recent Past in Chiapas: Federal Education and Indigenismo in the Highlands, 1921-1940” The Journal of Latin American Anthropology Vol.6, No.1, 2001, 59-83

  42. Community School, El Paso del Coyote, 1934

  43. Federal Rural School, 1942

  44. Agrarian Reform • Cardenas’s agrarian reform was “dramatic, large scale and contentious” (Knight) • particularly state expropriation of large scale commercial estates in La Laguna, Yucatan, Baja California, Sonora, Chiapas and Michoacan. • See Mexico Reader : Fernando Benitez “The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna” , 445-451, and Ben Fallaw’s work on Yucatan

  45. Agrarian Reform • 20,136,936 hectares distributed between 1935-1940, 10.2% of land area, 379,680 has/month, benefiting 776,000 ejidatarios in 11,000 communities • Ejidos comprised in 1934 1940 • Un-irrigated land 13.4 % 47.4% • Irrigated land 13.1 % 57.3 % • Total value of land 10.2 % 35.9 %

  46. Agrarian Reform • Ejidos % of Agricultural Production: • 11% in 1930 50.5% in 1940 • Capital Investment • 3.7 % in 1930 52.6% in 1940

  47. Critique of Land Reform • Yet, Knight concludes, much of the agrarian reform, such as collectivisation of the henequen plantations of Yucatan and the cotton plantations of La Laguna, amounted to the “socialisation of losses”, much like the nationalisation of the “played out railway system” in 1937 • See Fernando Benitez, “The Agrarian Reform in La Laguna”, in Mexico Reader

  48. Cardenista rally, La Laguna Coahuila, 1934 • “On November 6, 1936, Cardenas arrived with a group on engineers and began to distribute lands. The landowners’ arrogance disappeared as if by a magic spell. The President made them see that if they used any violence, the government would arm the campesinos, and the landowners, fearful of losing everything, folded their cards and resigned themselves to the inevitable...” Fernando Benitez

  49. Cardenista rally, La Laguna Coahuila, 1934

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