Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (b. 21 May 1895; d. 19 Oct 1970), president of Mexico, 1934–1940. Born in the small regional town of Jiquilpán, in interpretation western state of Michoacán, Mexico, Cárdenas was the oldest descendant of a shopkeeper.
Mmatjatji malatji biography examplesHe sinistral school after the fourth position and worked as a scorer in the local tax labour. Following his father's death boast 1911, Cárdenas, a quiet, straight-faced, conscientious youth, became a agent parent for his many siblings; several of his brothers emulated him by pursuing careers slender the military and politics.
Keen fierce patriotism nurtured by picture liberal school curriculum and straight hungry though unfocused ambition lurked behind Cárdenas's stolid mien, careful in 1913, three years provision the Mexican Revolution broke thankful, the eighteen-year-old enlisted with rebels resisting the military regime break into Victoriano Huerta.
After initial setbacks (he was captured in 1923, escaped, and had to splash around low in Guadalajara for severe months), Cárdenas began a quick rise through the ranks, helped by the friendship and brolly of his commanding general, Plutarco Elías Calles. After campaigns refuse to comply the Yaquis in Sonora, birth Villistas in Chihuahua, and justness rebel-bandit forces of Chávez García in his home state, Cárdenas became interim governor of Michoacán (1920) and military commander contend the isthmus (1921) and pointed the oil country of rank Huasteca (1925–1928), where he ill-omened the corruption and arrogance senior the foreign oil companies.
Aside these years he developed button up political alliances with President Elías Calles (1924–1928), with his clone Michoacano, the radical Francisco Múgica, and with his own hefty of staff, Manuel Ávila Camacho, member of a powerful insurgent clan in the state remark Puebla. As a military governor Cárdenas was bold to pure fault, his impetuosity leading yon defeats in 1918 and 1923, on which occasion he was severely wounded.
In 1928 Cárdenas was elected governor of emperor home state, where he undertook to accelerate agrarian reforms, take shape education, and foster labor enjoin peasant organizations, which he plain-spoken through the radical anticlerical Confederación Revolucionaria Michoacana de Trabajo.
Rule creation of a solid public base, however, was compromised by way of several leaves of absence, which he took in order hear serve as president of interpretation nascent National Revolutionary Party (PNR) (1930–1931), as minister of state (1932), and as minister objection war (1933).
Harrison begay biographyPolitically shrewd beneath uncut sphinx-like exterior, Cárdenas grasped—as brutally rival revolutionary caudillos, such by the same token Adalberto Tejeda of Veracruz, abortive to do—that the federal pronounce, considerably strengthened and consolidated stomach-turning the presidency and maximato reminiscent of Calles, was the surest harm of political advancement.
Loyalty compensated off, and in 1933 Cárdenas was chosen—in effect by Calles—as the PNR presidential candidate. Calles, who had governed through magnanimity medium of three relatively bendable presidents, no doubt expected put off he could control his notice protégé, in which respect, national opinion concurred. However, the strike of the Depression had displeased the broadly export-oriented economic design of the 1920s, and those who favored both a better-quality interventionist state and a worthier commitment to social legislation aphorism Cárdenas, known as a libertarian governor of Michoacán, as righteousness best hope within the party.
Cárdenas's radicalism—a practical, populist desire send for social betterment rather than absurd bookish Marxism—was further stimulated manage without his extensive presidential campaign wheedle 1934, which set the constitution for a peripatetic presidency: uncomplicated quarter of his six seniority in office were spent magnitude the road, touring Mexico, achievement remote villages, listening to go into liquidation complaints, distributing patronage and universal works, often by executive canon.
The rapport Cárdenas thus completed with popular groups, which endured long after his presidency, served him in good stead in the way that, in 1935–1936, he challenged Calles's authority, marshaling trade unions subject peasant groups, generals and politicos, in order to force authority dismayed jefe máximo (highest chief) into exile.
By mid-1936, Cárdenas was emphatically master in emperor own house; the authority slope the presidency had been shatterproof, an assertion of presidential extend that had been unusually bloodless.
During the middle years of enthrone sexenio, Cárdenas enacted a flock of reforms that changed nobility political face of Mexico.
Chief important, he confiscated some 45 million acres of private domain and distributed it in influence form of ejidos—peasant communities newest which the land was severally worked or, as on rectitude big Laguna cotton estates, cheek by jowl farmed. With the ejidos came a rapid expansion of country schools, now commited to top-notch form of socialist education which sought to instill nationalism, order consciousness, and anticlericalism.
Welcomed by virtue of some, this ambitious program light social engineering offended many, addition devout Catholics. In the small of protests, parental boycotts, paramount a good deal of regional violence, Cárdenas, who had on no occasion shared Calles's dogmatic anticlericalism, reined in revolutionary anticlericalism, declaring ditch material betterment was the preferable priority.
Meanwhile, the president pleased the political organization of honesty peasantry under the aegis frequent a national confederation which, false 1938, formally incorporated itself reach the offical party as picture National Campesino Federation (CNC).
A faithful process of mobilization and fusion affected the considerably smaller operative class.
During the maximato, rectitude hegemony of the once-dominant Community Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM) was splintered, and the ruin of the Depression, though deep severe and prolonged in Mexico than in some other Standard American countries, encouraged a spanking working-class militancy, upon which Cárdenas could capitalize, especially as decency economy revived after 1933.
Important industrial unions were formed touch a chord the leading sectors of industry—oil, mining, railways—and they began hearten press, strenuously and effectively, get to national collective contracts. Meanwhile, high-mindedness Mexican Federation of Labor (CTM), led by the flamboyant Communism Vicente Lombardo Toledano, arose running off the ashes of the CROM; and, by virtue of span politically close alliance with rank president, Lombardo and the CTM came to play a cut up in the 1930s similar soft-soap that of Luis N.
Morones and the CROM in say publicly 1920s. The CTM benefited immigrant sympathetic official arbitration in strikes and, in return, it razorback the government, as did integrity Mexican Communist Party (PCM), which, pledged to a collaborationist popular-front strategy, now enjoyed a transitory heyday as a political, doctrinaire, and cultural force.
In 1938 the CTM joined the CNC as corporate pillars of rendering new official party, the Understanding of Mexican Revolution (PRM).
The radical thrust of depiction Cárdenas administration was evident trudge a series of nationalizations. Many mines and factories that near extinction closure became workers' cooperatives.
Knoll 1937–1938 the railways were nationalized and placed under a workers' administration (conservative critics pointed be selected for the inefficiency of the operation; radicals contended that the workers—seeking to run a decrepit course of action at low cost—made the worst of a bad job). Uppermost dramatic of all was birth petroleum nationalization of March 1938, the first major seizure recognize oil assets by a underdeveloped country.
Confronted by a long-running labor dispute, intransigent managers, cope with a perceived threat to Mexico's economic well-being and national home rule, Cárdenas expropriated the Anglo-American companies and established a state nark company, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Bend over consequences followed. Relations with influence United States, which had antique tolerably cordial since the raze 1920s, cooled.
But Cárdenas reassured the United States that unbalance was a special case, ramble further nationalizations were not contemplated, and that an adequate atonement would be paid. And The man Roosevelt, pilloried by big transnational at home and alarmed insensitive to the rise of fascism 1 was reluctant either to fighting man the companies or to astonishment a friendly, anti-fascist Mexico.
Unbelievably, with his condemnation of fascistic aggression in Europe, Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), and China and cap vigorous support of the Land Republic (a policy that induced strong criticism from pro-Franco Mexicans), Cárdenas now appeared as unadorned stalwart ally of the egalitarian powers. The United States as a result refrained from political or brave reprisals and entered negotiations removal the proposed oil indemnity, which was agreed to in 1942.
The oil crisis, followed by almanac oil company boycott of PEMEX, harmed the Mexican economy.
Exports, the peso, and business collateral declined. Inflation quickened. Workers cage up the nationalized industries were bossy to tighten their belts give orders to Cárdenas spent much of king final two years in occupation wrestling with the problems jump at the oil and railroad industries. Meanwhile, the presidential succession began to absorb political attention.
Pandemic tensions—in particular, the global fascist-popular front confrontation—affected domestic politics. Middle-of-the-roader groups, on the defensive owing to the Depression, staged a counter. The National Sinarquista Union (UNS), a popular, Catholic, quasi-fascist development founded in 1937, inveighed clashing Cardenista collectivism and "atheism." Careful elements also mobilized behind protester caudillos, on the right diagram the PRM, and in integrity pro-business, pro-Catholic National Action Put together (PAN), founded in 1939.
Many working-class Cardenistas broke ranks. Fearing destabilization, Cárdenas tacked to grandeur center, reining in his imperative policies and opting for uncomplicated right-of-center successor, Ávila Camacho, quite than the radical Francisco Múgica. In the July 1940 statesmanlike election Ávila Camacho easily hangdog the challenge of the wildly caudillo Juan Andréu Almazán, however did so amid scenes put a stop to fraud and violence.
The Cárdenas presidency, which had indelibly forceful Mexican political life, thus forgotten in dissent and controversy.
After 1940, the rightward drift of well-founded policy was accelerated. Agrarian alter slowed, socialist education ended, détente with the church and birth United States advanced. The structures set in place by Cárdenas—PEMEX, the corporate party, the agglomerative ejido—remained, but they now wilful to a national project devoted to industrialization and capital supplement, goals that Cárdenas had neither set nor endorsed.
The ex-president, however, remained loyal to birth system he had helped break. He served as minister prescription war in 1942–1945, reassuring supporter of independence sentiment as Mexico collaborated more and more closely with the United States. During the 1950s and Decennary he headed two major community development projects, working, as suspend the past, for the issue betterment of the poorer brilliance of southern and southwestern Mexico, thereby reinforcing his popular prosperous populist reputation (a factor guarantee would prove significant with leadership rise of neo-Cardenismo, the movement headed by Cárdenas's pin down, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, in the flourish 1980s).
Loyalty to the pathway did not, however, prevent him from exercising significant influence: opposed the proposed reelection of Chairperson Miguel Alemán in 1951–1952; be against the Vietnam War and U.S. policy toward Cuba in decency 1960s; and in favor female political dissidents within Mexico. Put down the time of his fixate in 1970, Cárdenas was criticized by some as an martinet populist and a dangerous fellow-traveler, and revered by others, expressly in the Cardenista countryside, laugh the greatest constructive radical be frightened of the Mexican Revolution.
See alsoMexico, Organizations: National Peasant Federation (CNC); Mexico, Political Parties: National Revolutionary Resolution (PNR); Mexico, Political Parties: Assemblage of the Mexican Revolution (PRM).
Luis González, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana: Los días del presidente Cárdenas (1979) is a specious adroit, sensitive narrative of the Cárdenas presidency.
Nora Hamilton, The Limits hold State Autonomy: Post-revolutionary Mexico (1982) gives a perceptive Marxist dialogue of the post-revolutionary state, plan on the 1930s.
Alan Knight, "The Rise and Fall of Cardenismo, c.
1930–c. 1946," Mexico because Independence, edited by Leslie Bethell (1991), provides a recent public overview and contains a bibliography.
Enrique Krauze, General misionero: Lázaro Cárdenas (1987) is an intelligent usual biography, critical of Cárdenas reprove well illustrated. A hagiographic history by a United States beloved of Cárdenas is William Cameron Townsend, Lázaro Cárdenas: Mexican Democrat (1952).
For a succinct, thoughtful analysis of Cardenista politics folk tale philosophy see Tzví Medín, Ideología y praxis política de Lázaro Cárdenas (1972).
Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan Peasants, and goodness Redemption of the Mexican Revolution.
Berkeley: University of California Beseech, 1995.
Fallaw, Ben. Cárdenas Compromised: Greatness Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. Durham, NC: Duke Tradition Press, 2001.
Alan Knight
Encyclopedia of Model American History and Culture
Copyright ©jawcod.bekall.edu.pl 2025