Lazaro Cardenas del Río (1934-1940)
In Mexican History, we have had a lot of different presidents. Some were corrupt, some did nothing, and few of them really cared about Mexican society and help the country. Back in 1934 Mexico was still dominated by the corrupt people from Mexican Revolution war. Plutarco Ellias Calles was still turning the country down. All Mexican were getting tired of this. The day of elections arrived, and Mexicans started voting, a good and honest man won, Lazaro Cardenas del Río. Lazaro Cardenas solved a very difficult past that mexicans had faced, but he turned that 6 years in one of the best years for Mexican economy. He did 3 very important things im going to talk about: Cardenism, agrarian reform law, and oil expropriation.
Cardenism was an idealism adopted by Mexicans during Cardenas Presidency; it was based on a big support to Lazaro Cardenas, by the army and politicians that were opposed to corruption and crime. Almost every Mexican believed in Cardenism since they voted for him, they truly believed on Cardenas. He was not treatened by any other old politic corrupt since all the people where in Cardenas support. Cardenas with this ideology raised the thme on workers rights by a working movement where they were united with the government, and government got commited with them. Cardenas offered an viable economic proyect to enterprises and business men. He also included government support on Religion. This whole ideology made the first year in Cardenas presidency a good first step because people started to believe on him, and with the Mexican people support, he had passed a very difficult first test in his presidency.
In the north of Mexico during 1935, Cardenas started the Agrarian Reform law started originally by Emiliano Zapata. This law was considered by many people as one of the biggest success in Mexican history during 1900’s. During Cardenas presidency they gave away about 18 million square hectares to communities and agricultural working people. Thanks to this, the social lands raised in over 25 million hectares. This means that the dessert lands where nobody used to live they where now used for agricultural purposes. The object of this land distribution, was not only to pleased peoples demands, the purpose was to make small productive people with capacity to make big agricultural business.
The structure in this land distribution process was based on lands that where given to poor communities so that people could work there and make good profits. Each working land was regulated by an national organization called “Comisaria Ejidal”. This organization was in charge of sending people to supervise if they were working the land. If the supervising persons called the organization telling them that the land was not worked, the organization sent more people to work the land or replace the people that were not working there. This land distribution was such a great idea that Cardenas created a Bank just for Agricultural profits, where the workers could save their money there. Cardenas kept going on with this law over Mexico. After the Mexican Revolution and Cristeran War, the country was economically in ruin, but this raised up Mexican economy.
Apart from land distribution and agricultural financial aid, the agrarian reform of Cardenism included the establishment of an education system. This system educated students as professional agrarian that would help the development of land distribution. In this sense the agrarian reform during Cardenas presidency from 1934 to 1940, was very different because the old presidents just made monopolies about the land distribution, and with Cardenas was a big successful process educating children how to work the lands and making big profits that helped Mexican economy.
Maybe the most important political decision was oil expropriation. Due to a combination of factors:
