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Cardenas and Cardenismo

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas was characterized by far-reaching socioeconomic, political, and cultural reforms. In the cities, Cárdenas championed the right to strike and the implementation of a strict interpretation of the 1931 Law of Work. In the countryside, he enforced the tenets of the Agrarian Code of 1934, allowing hacienda workers to apply for government land grants (ejidos) for the first time. In February 1936, he gave his support to the peasants’ armed defense of their territorial gains, announcing that the government should “give them the Mausers with which they made the Revolution . . . so they can defend the ejido and the school” and allowing them to join the official army reserve (Raquel Sosa Elízaga, Los códigos ocultos del cardenismo: Un estudio de la violencia política, el cambio social y la continuidad institucional [Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Plaza y Valdés Editores, 1996], 109). Finally, he increased the number of land grants exponentially. Between 1930 and 1940, the proportion of cultivated land held as ejidos increased from 15 to 50 percent. At the same time, social reform fed into political restructuring. He supported the creation of a major peasant union (the National Peasant Confederation, or CNC) and a major workers’ confederation (the Confederation of Mexican Workers, or CTM). Although these confederations came into conflict over which organization had the right to control Mexico’s rural masses, by 1937 Cárdenas had disciplined their leaders and delineated their national roles. The following year, he changed the name of the national party (the National Revolutionary Party) to the Party of the Mexican Revolution and permitted members of the CNC and the CTM automatic membership of the organization. At the same time, structural changes paralleled and overlapped with large-scale cultural reforms as Mexican intellectuals and bureaucrats continued their revolutionary campaigns to create “new men” and “new women.” Schools continued to be the linchpins of these crusades. In late 1934, legislators changed Article 3 of the Constitution, introducing “socialist education” and “exclud[ing] all religious doctrine” from school syllabi. Outside the classroom, state administrators and cultural entrepreneurs attempted to instill ideas of anticlericalism, labor, hygiene, nationalism, and gender and race relations through music, radio, cinema, health programs, monuments, and civic festivals. Large-scale changes generated considerable opposition, especially on the right, where shifting, regional alliances of large landowners, ranchers, sharecroppers, Catholics, and industrialists tried to waylay the Cardenista project, through voting, demonstrations, and targeted terror.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. Although standalone Biographies of Lázaro Cárdenas are fairly rare, general overviews of the period are plentiful. Over the past fifty years, opinions on Cárdenas and his raft of socioeconomic, political, and cultural initiatives have reflected and stood in for general opinions on the revolutionary regime. Early overviews, especially those of US journalists and political scientists, praised the president’s efforts. However, following the massacre of students in Tlatelolco in 1968, “revisionist” scholars of the 1970s and 1980s were less generous. Historians like Córdova 1974, Hernández Chávez 1979, and Ianni 1977 viewed the mass mobilizations and concomitant reforms of Cárdenas’s presidency as designed to co-opt the popular forces of the Revolution and establish the groundwork for the expansion of the Mexican state and the dominance of the capitalist class. Although the political prominence of Lázaro Cárdenas’s son, Cuauhtemoc, has encouraged a revival of earlier more reverential treatments (Gilly 1994), most recent overviews have sought to balance appreciations of Cardenismo’s major achievements with acknowledgments of its limitations and problems (Hamilton 1982, Knight 1990, Knight 1994, Shulgosky 1981, Sosa Elizaga 1996).
  8.  
  9. Córdova, Arnaldo. La política de masas del cardenismo. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1974.
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  11. The classic revisionist work on Cárdenas’s presidency. Concludes that Cárdenas’s land and labor reforms were designed to co-opt the Mexican poor into the governing party and allow the creation of a powerful “Leviathan” state.
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  13. Gilly, Adolfo. El cardenismo: Una utopia mexicana. Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1994.
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  15. In this work, the left-wing historian Adolfo Gilly restates his argument that Lázaro Cárdenas was the sole Mexican president to act on the agrarian and labor demands of the Revolution. Written from an overtly political perspective, Gilly concludes that this period of intense mobilization and reform was as close to revolutionary utopia as Mexico had ever achieved.
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  17. Hamilton, Nora. The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
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  19. An interesting, well-researched, and ambivalent reading of Cardenismo and its long-term effects. The author views Cardenismo as part of a broad, progressive alliance, prepared to employ quasisocialist forms of ownership in order to phase out feudal conditions and achieve a degree of justice within the capitalist system. Despite this, the book ends on a pessimistic note, concluding that right-wing opposition eventually curtailed Cárdenas’s plans.
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  21. Hernández Chávez, Alicia. Historia de la Revolución Mexicana. Vol. 16, Periodo 1934–1940: La mecánica cardenista. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1979.
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  23. Another of the classic revisionist interpretations of Cardenismo. Although the work plays down Cárdenas’s achievements, there are some excellent sections on the relationship between the presidency and regional forces.
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  25. Ianni, Octavio. El estado capitalista en la epoca de Cárdenas. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1977.
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  27. A critical, Marxist appreciation of the Cardenista regime. Although Ianni restates Córdova’s claims on the expansion of the Mexican state, he also emphasizes how the Cardenista regime, by stimulating an internal market for consumer goods, also encouraged the strengthening of the bourgeoisie.
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  29. Knight, Alan. “Mexico c. 1930–1946.” In The Cambridge History of Latin America. Vol. 7, 1930 to the Present. Edited by Leslie Bethell, 3–82. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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  31. The best overall interpretation of the Cárdenas’s years. Building on the regional studies of the 1980s, the work offers a broad, polyphonic view of the regime, which balances discussion of top-down policies with a sweeping appreciation for popular responses and local variations.
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  33. Knight, Alan. “Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?” Journal of Latin American Studies 26 (1994): 73–107.
  34. DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X0001885XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Another excellent work on Cardenismo. Beautifully written and well argued, the article takes apart previous revisionist interpretations, demonstrating both the achievements of the regime and the constraints on the expansion of the state. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  37. Shulgosky, Anatoli. Mexico en la encrucijada de su historia. Mexico City: El Caballito, 1981.
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  39. An interesting, well-researched piece of Marxist history, which contextualizes Cárdenas’s presidency within the broad narrative of postrevolutionary Mexico. He sees Cárdenas’s agrarian and labor reforms as a genuinely radical break with the rhetorically reformist, but broadly ineffective, social engineering of the preceding decade.
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  41. Sosa Elizaga, Raquel. Los códigos ocultos del Cardenismo: Un estudio de la violencia politica, el cambio social y la continuidad institucional. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1996.
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  43. An interesting alternative view of Cardenismo, which dispenses with deep analysis of state motivations and instead concentrates on the unintended consequences. In doing so, the author portrays the Cardenista state as perpetually waylaid by a series of armed, often right-wing, groups.
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  45. Journals
  46.  
  47. Clearly, no scholarly journals focus exclusively on the period of Cárdenas’s presidency. However, a handful of journals often contain new articles on this key period of the country’s history. Some specialist Mexican journals (such as Historia Mexicana, Historia y Grafia, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, or Relaciones) offer space for extended regional and local studies. Other Latin American journals (such as the Hispanic American Historical Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and the Latin American Research Review) offer not only these types of works but also broader thematic pieces.
  48.  
  49. Hispanic American Historical Review. 1918–.
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  51. Published by Duke University Press. The leading English-language journal on Latin American history. Although submissions have dropped off recently, studies of postrevolutionary Mexican cultural crusades were extremely prevalent during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The book reviews are excellent.
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  53. Historia y Grafía. 1993–.
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  55. An excellent Mexican history journal, published by the Universidad Iberoamericana. Specializes in more reflective theoretical works and new cultural history. Articles on postrevolutionary cultural programs, especially those of the Cárdenas era, are common.
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  57. Historia Mexicana. 1951–.
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  59. The foremost Mexican history journal, published by the Colegio de México. Up to the late 20th century, historical articles on the colony and the 19th century dominated the journal. However, in the early 21st century, both Mexican and foreign scholars started to publish on Cardenismo’s social and cultural effects.
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  61. Journal of Latin American Studies. 1969–.
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  63. UK-based journal of Latin American studies, published by Cambridge University Press. Although the journal often contains a great deal of works of sociology, political science, and international relations, there are also historical articles on postrevolutionary Mexico during the Cárdenas period.
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  65. Latin American Research Review. 1965–.
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  67. Interdisciplinary journal published by the University of Pittsburg Press. Although it contains some research works, it specializes in broadly thematic essays. Rarely contains articles directly relating to Cardenismo.
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  69. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. 1985–.
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  71. A broad, multidisciplinary, bilingual journal focusing on all aspects of Mexican history, published by the University of California Press. As considerable space is devoted to history articles, new pieces on Cardenismo are fairly frequent.
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  73. Relaciones. 1980–.
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  75. Journal specializing in studies of history and society published by Mexico’s foremost regional college, the Colegio de Michoacán. Following the template laid down by the Colegio’s founder, Luis González y González, local studies dominate. As a result, the journal contains some excellent pieces on the regional effects of Cardenismo.
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  77. Biographies
  78.  
  79. Given Lázaro Cárdenas’s huge historical import, there are surprisingly few out-and-out biographies. Cárdenas’s guarded and rather functional memoirs offer little insight into his personal motivations. At the same time, many scholars have found Cárdenas, the man, a rather inscrutable figure. Luis Cabrera famously described the former president as Mexico’s “most ill-educated and ignorant” president, with “the political capacities of el Niño Fidencio” (Fernando Carmona, “El cardenismo, fuerza del pueblo y la nación,” in Benito Rey Romay, Vigencia del Cardenismo [Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas, 1990], 133). However, biographies do reveal the full spectrum of opinions of the president and the period. Early journalistic biographies (Benitez 1977, Blanco Moheno 1972, Romero Flores 1970, Townsend 1952) offered some interesting insights but were often distorted by a nostalgic romanticism and an overtly political desire to return to the revolutionary radicalism of the Cárdenas era. More recent attempts range from rather absurd denunciations of Cárdenas’s communism (Abascal 1988) to more measured, if generally positive, evaluations (Krauze 1995).
  80.  
  81. Abascal, Salvador. Lázaro Cárdenas: Presidente comunista. Mexico City: Editorial Tradición, 1988.
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  83. A denunciation of Cárdenas’s perceived radicalism by the leader of the right-wing, nationalist organization, the Unión Nacional Sinarquista. As such, the work offers more insight into Abascal’s distinct historical vision than Cárdenas and can be filed next to his ahistorical companion piece, Juárez marxista, 1848–1872.
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  85. Benitez, Fernando. Lázaro Cárdenas y la Revolución Mexicana. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1977.
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  87. An enormous, three-volume biography of Lázaro Cárdenas from his early childhood in rural Michoacán, through his involvement in the Mexican Revolution, to his eventual presidency. As a journalistic work, it is ambitious, breezy, and well written. However, problems with social and cultural reforms are glossed over or ignored.
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  89. Blanco Moheno, Roberto. Tata Lázaro: Vida, obra y muerte de Cárdenas. Mexico City: Múgica y Carrillo Puerto, Diana, 1972.
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  91. Another flattering portrait of Lázaro Cárdenas’s presidency by a left-wing journalist, written rather hopefully during the early days of the Echeverria presidency. Here, Cárdenas is compared to other, similar, reforming revolutionaries—the Michoacán governor, Francisco Múgica, and the Yucátan governor, Felipe Carrillo Puerto.
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  93. Krauze, Enrique. General misionero: Lázaro Cárdenas. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1995.
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  95. A more contemporary biography of Cárdenas, which blends a wonderful turn of phrase with an appreciation for both the benign intentions and the less favorable consequences of the regime.
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  97. Romero Flores, Jesús. Lázaro Cárdenas: Biografía de un gran mexicano. Mexico City: B. Costa-Amic, 1970.
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  99. A brief, adulatory biography of president Lázaro Cárdenas. Written as the revolutionary project was turning increasingly repressive, the work extols the virtues of Cárdenas’s social projects.
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  101. Townsend, William Cameron. Lázaro Cárdenas: Mexican Democrat. Ann Arbor, MI: George Wahr, 1952.
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  103. Cárdenas’s close American friend and the leader of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico offers an extremely adulatory portrayal of Cárdenas, palatable for a US audience. Clear parallels are drawn between Cárdenas and the US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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  105. Novels and Plays
  106.  
  107. There are many novels and plays that deal with the social, cultural, and political effects of Cardenismo. Some were written by critical contemporaries of Cárdenas, keen to criticize the growth of a new elite (Azuela 1985, Usigli 1963). Others were written long after the period and still offer valuable insights into the dynamics of the period (Mastretta 1997). Many emerged from the school of indigenista literature and attempt to portray the alternative worlds of Mexico’s indigenous groups (Lopez y Fuentes 1961, Pozas 1959). Fuentes 1978 demonstrates the ongoing importance of Cárdenas as both a symbol of Mexican national identity and a nostalgic emblem of a more innocent era of revolutionary reform. Graham Greene, who visited the country during the mid-1930s, looks at the effects of state anticlericalism on a dyspeptic priest and his flock in Greene 1946.
  108.  
  109. Azuela, Mariano. Nueva burguesía. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica, 1985.
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  111. Azuela’s angry denunciation of the revolutionary generals, Porfirian survivors, industrialists, and chancers who together formed Mexico’s new bureaucratic elite.
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  113. Fuentes, Carlos. La cabeza de la hidra. Mexico City: J. Mortiz, 1978.
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  115. The novel, set in the 1970s, concerns a Mexican bureaucrat, Felix Maldonaldo, who becomes increasingly involved in national and international intrigue over Mexico’s vast petroleum reserves. Throughout the book, Fuentes plays on Maldonaldo’s reverence for President Cárdenas and revolutionary economic nationalism, which provoked the expropriation of the oil industry in 1938.
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  117. Greene, Graham. The Power and the Glory. New York: Viking, 1946.
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  119. Greene’s tale of the Mexican whisky priest may be heavily influenced by Greene’s own Catholicism and dotted with certain unhelpful stereotypes. But few authors capture the sheer desperation of Mexico’s Catholics during the era.
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  121. Lopez y Fuentes, Gregorio. El Indio. New York: Unger, 1961.
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  123. One of the most famous works of indigenista literature by the Huasteca author. The work reflects a particular brand of early Cardenista indigenismo and concentrates on the poverty of the indigenous village and the control of the local priest.
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  125. Mastretta, Angeles. Arráncame la vida. New York: Vintage, 1997.
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  127. One of Mexico’s principal feminist authors examines the “revolutionary” attitudes toward women through a fictionalized life story of the wife of womanizer, bull-fighting aficionado, and violent anti-agrarista governor, Maximino Avila Camacho.
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  129. Pozas, Ricardo. Juan Pérez Jolote: Biografia de un tzotzil. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959.
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  131. An excellent example of the indigenista genre of novels. This particular work is part novel, part anthropology and takes the form of an account of an indigenous Tzotzil man from the southern state of Chiapas.
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  133. Usigli, Rodolfo. El gesticulador: Pieza para demagogos en tres actos. New York: Appleton, 1963.
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  135. A hilarious satire on politics and intellectuals in postrevolutionary Mexico. The work was written in the late 1930s. However, when it was first shown during the presidency of Miguel Aleman (1946–1952), Mexican authorities banned the work.
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  137. Autobiographies and Testimonies
  138.  
  139. There are hundreds of autobiographies that deal with the period of Cardenismo in one way or another. These are a selection of some of the most important. Many of the autobiographies deal with high politics. Some, like Cárdenas 1974, are dry and rather limited, only really revealing the drudgery of day-to-day politics. Others are much more colorful. Santos 1984 and Bojorquez, et al. 2001 offer barbed comments on a wide range of aspirant politicians and insights into the mechanics of national and local political competition. Others still (Chávez Orozco 2001) offer a window into intellectual developments of the time. Rather fewer autobiographies deal with the struggles of Cardenismo’s many followers, although there is an incipient mini-industry in testimonies of rural teachers (Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares and Dirección General de Culturas Populares 1987, Sotelo Arevalo 1996). Fewer still look at the experience of either rural peasants (Morett Alatorre 1989) or dispossessed landowners (Burns 1964).
  140.  
  141. Benítez, Fernando. Entrevistas con un solo tema: Lázaro Cárdenas. Mexico City: UNAM, 1979.
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  143. Collection of interviews with six intimate associates of Cárdenas—Eduardo Suárez, Raúl Castellano, Ignacio García Téllez, Amalia Cárdenas, Elena Vázquez Gómez, and Eduardo Rincón Gallardo. They reveal more about the president’s personality and political ideology than his own memoirs.
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  145. Bojorquez, Juan de Dios, James W. Wilkie, and Edna Monzón Wilkie. Frente a la Revolución Mexicana: 17 protagonistas de la etapa constructiva. Vol. 2. Mexico City: UAM, 2001.
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  147. The secretary of the Ministry of the Interior under both Cárdenas and his predecessor, Abelardo Rodríguez gives a series of sharp pen portraits of the major political leaders of the era.
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  149. Burns, Archibald. En presencia de nadie. Mexico City: J. Mortiz, 1964.
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  151. A rare account of a member of the Porfirian elite during the Cárdenas era. Manages to capture the experience of one of the Mexicans who lost their entire family fortune during the period.
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  153. Cárdenas, Lázaro. Apuntes, 1913–1940. Mexico City: Siglo XIX, 1974.
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  155. Memoirs of President Cárdenas in diary form. This volume stretches from his revolutionary days to the end of his presidency. Entries are limited and rarely reveal Cárdenas’s broader personal or ideological motivations.
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  157. Chávez Orozco Luis, James W. Wilkie, and Edna Monzón Wilkie. Frente a la Revolución Mexicana: 17 protagonistas de la etapa constructiva. Vol. 1. Mexico City: UAM, 2001.
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  159. An interview with Luis Chávez Orozco, who was head of public education from 1933 to 1939 and head of the Autonomous Department of Indigenous Issues from 1939 to 1940. Extremely important insight into indigenista thinking during the Cárdenas years.
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  161. Morett Alatorre, Luis. La lucha por la tierra en los valles del yaqui y mayo: Historia oral del sur de Sonora. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1989.
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  163. An interesting collection of testimonies reflecting on the effects of agrarian reform in the state of Sonora during the Cárdenas years and beyond.
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  165. Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares and Dirección General de Culturas Populares. Los maestros y la cultura nacional, 1920–1952. 5 vols. Mexico City: SEP, 1987.
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  167. Five volumes of interviews with rural teachers from all over Mexico. Together, the work offers insights into the broad panorama of educational experience during the postrevolutionary era.
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  169. Santos, Gonzalo N. Memorias. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1984.
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  171. An extraordinary insight into the mechanics of both national and local governments in Mexico written by the self-styled strongman of San Luís Potosí. His comments on Cárdenas and Cardenismo often drip with an acid rancher wit.
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  173. Sotelo Arevalo, Salvador. Historia de mi vida: Autobiografia y memorias de un maestro rural en Mexico, 1904–1965. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Historicos de la Revolucion Mexicana and Secretaria de Gobernacion, 1996.
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  175. A fascinating account of the rural school teacher Salvador Sotelo Arevalo. The work is a remarkably intimate and vivid account of a radical socialist teacher. The sections on popular anticlericalism are extremely strong.
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  177. International Relations
  178.  
  179. During Cárdenas’s presidency, Mexican diplomats negotiated a series of deals with foreign powers over the expropriation of foreign-owned lands, over the expropriation of the oil industry in 1938, and over the immigration of European, especially Spanish, refugees. Historiography on this subject can be divided between the overwhelming majority of studies on US-Mexican relations (Dwyer 2002, Knight 1987, Schuler 1998) and those dealing with relations between Mexico and other major national powers (Gleizer Salzman 2000, Lida 2001, Meyer 1991). At the same time, students can also notice a gradual shift away from the framework of dependency theory toward more nuanced appreciations of the limits of the great powers’ influence.
  180.  
  181. Dwyer, John. “Diplomatic Weapons of the Weak: Mexican Policymaking during the U.S.-Mexican Agrarian Dispute, 1934–1941.” Diplomatic History 26.3 (2002).
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  183. An excellent and original essay on the negotiations between the US and Mexican governments over the expropriation of US lands in northern Mexico. Dwyer argues that Mexican diplomats took advantage of Roosevelt’s broad sympathy toward Cardenismo and employed the “weapons of the weak” in order to undermine US demands. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  185. Gleizer Salzman, Daniela. México frente a la inmigración de refugiados judíos: 1934–1940. Mexico City: CONACULTA, 2000.
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  187. An excellent introduction to the politics of Mexican immigration during the Cárdenas era. The work demonstrates that Mexico, like many other countries during the 1930s, was ill-prepared to change immigration policy in order to accommodate the thousands of Jews fleeing Europe.
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  189. Knight, Alan. U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1910–1940: An Interpretation. La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, 1987.
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  191. An excellent overview of US-Mexican diplomacy during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. Although most of the work concentrates on the pre-1920 period, the author’s insights on the limits of Mexican nationalism and US xenophobia are used to explain the Cárdenas period as well.
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  193. Lida, Clara E., ed. México y España durante el primer franquismo, 1939–1950: Rupturas formales, relaciones oficiosas. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 2001.
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  195. An important edited volume, which provides an overview of the multiple interactions between Mexico and Spain during the late 1930s and the 1940s. There are quantitative studies of the social status of Spanish immigrants as well as painstaking diplomatic analyses of the relations between Mexico and the Franco regime.
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  197. Meyer, Lorenzo. Su Majestad Británica contra la Revolución Mexicana: El fin de un imperio informal. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1991.
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  199. The book looks at the drawn-out demise of Britain’s informal empire in Mexico from 1900 to 1950. The work relies heavily on dependency theory and views Mexico as a victim of Great Britain’s extensive economic power.
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  201. Schuler, Friedrich E. Mexico between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934–1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
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  203. A well-researched account of Mexican foreign relations during the Cárdenas period. Rather than viewing Mexico as a pawn in the contests between Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Schuler argues that Mexico managed to take advantages of the divisions opened up by World War II to assert a degree of economic sovereignty.
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  205. The Oil Industry
  206.  
  207. On 18 March 1938, Lázaro Cárdenas declared that all Mexico’s oil reserves belonged to the nation and nationalized the US and Anglo-Dutch operating companies. A few months later he created Pétroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the government company with exclusive rights over the exploration, extraction, refining, and sale of the oil. The move was the centerpiece of Cárdenas’s policy of economic nationalism. Inside the country, the expropriation generated considerable support on both left and right. Outside Mexico, foreign oil companies attempted to start a boycott of Mexican goods and successfully persuaded US and European governments to refuse to buy PEMEX oil. Despite this, PEMEX survived. The nationalization of the oil industry became one of Cárdenas’s most important and popular legacies. There are many works on the oil expropriation. Most look at the international and national debates over the process of nationalization. Others look at the politics of the petrol workers’ union (Herrera Montelongo 1998). Debate centers on whether the oil expropriation was an exceptional piece of economic nationalism (Brown 1993, Brown 1997, Brown and Knight 1992) or the logical extension of a long history of revolutionary economic nationalism (Meyer 1968).
  208.  
  209. Brown, Jonathan. Oil and Revolution in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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  211. A comprehensive study of the oil industry during the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. Brown demonstrates that internal factors, including declining profits, weakened oil companies and permitted the government takeover.
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  213. Brown, Jonathan. “Empresa y política: Cómo y porqué se nacionalizó la industria petrolera.” In Las grandes empresas en México, 1850–1930. Edited by Carlos Marichal and Mario Cerruti, 317–344. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económico, 1997.
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  215. A clear and concise distillation of Brown’s argument for the expropriation of the oil industry.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Brown, Jonathan C., and Alan Knight, eds. The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
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  219. A collection of excellent essays that bring together US, European, and Mexican scholars to discuss the expropriation of the oil industry and its long-term ramifications for Mexican foreign relations and economic policy. Essays on the petrol workers’ union are also strong.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Herrera Montelongo, Judith. Colaboración y conflicto: El sindicato petrolero y el cardenismo. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1998.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. A comprehensive study of the role of the petrol workers’ union during the period of Cardenismo. Copublished with M. A. Porrúa, Azcapotzalco, Mexico.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Meyer, Lorenzo. México y los Estados Unidos en el conflito petrolero, 1917–1942. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1968.
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  227. The classic work on the expropriation of the oil industry during the Cárdenas era. Meyer places the expropriation within a larger history of US imperialism and Mexican revolutionary resistance.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Labor and Industry
  230.  
  231. During the 1930s, President Cárdenas supported the right to strike and encouraged the formation of a broad-based popular front of interlinking unions. At the same time, he also backed the creation of a dominant labor confederation, the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM). Labor, like land reform, has generated a great deal of debate among historians of the Cárdenas era. Early appreciations tended to laud Cárdenas’s achievements (Ashby 1967). Revisionists viewed Cárdenas support for labor as a base palliative, a toxic blend of small-scale reforms, negotiated wage hikes, and rhetoric designed to co-opt potentially radical groups, which set the groundwork for the ascendancy of the industrial bourgeoisie (Anguiano 1975, Aziz Nassif 1989, León and Marván 1985). More contemporary scholars have sought to situate Cardenista labor reforms within the context of the 1930s rather than projecting them forward into the postwar period. In doing so, they have stressed both the radicalism of Cárdenas’s early policies and the constraining force of powerful industrialist groups (Carr 1992, López Pardo 1997, Snodgrass 2003). Cárdenas 1987 rather stands alone. Here, the economic historian skillfully demonstrates that despite state reforms, Mexico’s process of industrialization started during the Cárdenas period and not during the following decades.
  232.  
  233. Anguiano, Arturo. El estado y la política obrera del cardenismo. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1975.
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  235. A concise and sharp revisionist critique of Cárdenas’s labor reforms. Anguiano focuses on the ways in which the creation of the CTM and its membership in the national party co-opted workers’ groups.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Ashby, Joe C. Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
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  239. One of the first historical accounts of the labor movement under President Cárdenas.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Aziz Nassif, Alberto. El estado mexicano y la CTM. Mexico City: Ediciones de la Casa Chata, 1989.
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  243. The book looks at the relations between the main labor union, the CTM, and the Mexican state from the 1930s to the 1980s. Aziz Nassif argues that even during Cárdenas era, state authorities sought to use the union to control workers’ groups.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Cárdenas, Enrique. La industrialización mexicana durante la Gran Depresión. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1987.
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  247. An important, top-down view of industry, industrial relations, and the Mexican economy during the 1930s.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Carr, Barry. Marxism and Communism in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992.
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  251. Carr’s book looks at the history of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) during the 20th century. The section on the PCM’s role in labor movements during the Cárdenas era is particularly useful.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. León, Samuel, and Ignacio Marván. La clase obrera en la historia de México. Vol. 10, En el cardenismo (1934–1940). Mexico City: Siglo XIX, UNAM, 1985.
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  255. A solid overview of the relations between the Cárdenas government, the working class, the labor unions, and the industrial elite.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. López Pardo, Gustavo. La administracion obrera de los Ferrocarrileros Nacional. Mexico City: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, 1997.
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  259. The book looks at the workers’ takeover of the railways between 1937 and 1940. Although the project ended in complete disaster, López Padro contextualizes the failure by looking at the financial constraints of the Cardenista government and the power of certain elite groups.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Snodgrass, Michael. Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890–1950. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  262. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511512056Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. A sophisticated regional study of the relations among the Mexican state, the working class, and the industrial elite in the northern city of Monterrey. In the section on Cardenismo, Snodgrass pays particular attention to the ways in which Monterrey industrialists tried (with limited success) to undermine the Cardenista project.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Agrarian Reform
  266.  
  267. Between 1934 and 1940, President Cárdenas dispersed nearly eighteen million hectares among nearly eight hundred thousand peasants. The distribution of hacienda lands far outstripped the agrarian reform of both his predecessors and his successors. For decades, historians have debated the socioeconomic and political consequences of this policy. Historians have long debated the significance of Cárdenas’s reforms, their interim motives, and their long-term political and socioeconomic effects. Revisionist historians and social scientists argued that the achievements of Cardenismo were more apparent than real. Agrarismo and especially the communal projects of the Yucatán, Nueva Italia, La Laguna, and Lombardia were failures, badly led, deficiently implemented, and poorly funded (Glantz 1974). Land redistribution on a smaller scale was either usurped by the provincial petit-bourgeois or mitigated by the efforts of the landholding elite (Gledhill 1991, Meyer 1987). Moreover, agrarismo was not only an economic fiasco; it was also a deliberate program of restraint and co-option. Cardenismo, by retreating from the more radical reform program of the communists and the Veracruz followers of radical governor Adalberto Tejeda, stabilized the countryside, protected the national bourgeoisie, and allowed the development and strengthening of capitalism in the country (Falcón 1978). Furthermore, by linking land reform to membership of the national political party, Cárdenas achieved “the political debilitation and even immobilization of the organized masses” and, as a result, established the framework of the corporate state (Benjamin 1996, 180). In contrast, since the 1990s, historians have attempted to resurrect the reputation of the Cardenista reform movement (Boyer 2003, Knight 1991). By querying the coercive power of the state, they have concluded that agrarismo was an organic, radical project and not “the stepchild of political patronage and elite cultural meddling.” Furthermore, it entailed “a massive transfer of resources that profoundly changed the country’s socio-political map” (Christopher R. Boyer, “Old Loves, New Loyalties: Agrarismo in Michoacán, 1920–1928,” Hispanic American Historical Review 78.3 [1998], 454; Alan Knight, “The Rise and Fall of Cardenismo, c. 1930–c. 1946,” in Mexico since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 264).
  268.  
  269. Benjamin, Thomas. A Rich Land, A Poor People: Politics and Society in Modern Chiapas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
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  271. Good regional study of society, economy, and politics in the heavily indigenous state of Chiapas. Contains a large section on the failure of land reform efforts in both the highlands and the lowlands.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Boyer, Christopher R. Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacan, 1920–1935. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
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  275. Boyer’s excellent cultural analysis of land reform in Michoacán has been extremely influential. On the one hand, he demonstrates the importance of the term campesino or peasant as both a political category and a cultural identity. On the other hand, he demonstrates how peasants reformulated this category in order to secure their demands.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Falcón, Romana. “El surgimiento de agrarismo cardenista—Una revisión de las tesis populista.” Historia Mexicana 27.3 (1978): 333–386.
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  279. The clearest statement of the revisionist position on land reform. Falcón claims that Cardenista land reform not only was slow and ineffective but also demobilized radical groups and tied ejidatarios to the state through the National Peasant Confederation.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Glantz, Susana. El ejido colectivo de Nueva Italia. Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones Superiores, 1974.
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  283. A classic work on the effects of agrarismo in the network of ejidos in Nueva Italia, Michoacán. Glantz argues that a lack of political will and government support produced the complete failure of land reform in the area.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Gledhill, John. Casi Nada: A Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo. Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 1991.
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  287. An anthrohistorical study of land reform in a hacienda in Cárdenas’s home state of Michoacán. Gledhill argues that agrarian reform encountered substantial resistance because of peons’ Catholicism and the relative security of hacienda subsistence. He goes on to claim that relatively wealthy peasants actually benefited from the donation of the ejido.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Knight, Alan. “Land and Society in Revolutionary Mexico: The Destruction of the Great Haciendas.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 7.1 (Winter 1991): 73–104.
  290. DOI: 10.2307/1052028Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. A clear refutation of revisionist conceptions of land reform. Knight argues that the Cardenista reforms were far reaching, effective, and far less explicitly political than has sometimes been imagined.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Meyer, Jean. “‘Los kulaki’ del ejido (los años 30).” Relaciones 29 (1987): 23–43.
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  295. Suggestive essay on the effects of land reform during the 1930s. Meyer claims that “kulaks” or rich peasants, not their poor landless counterparts, really benefited from the Cardenista land reform effort.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Indigenismo
  298.  
  299. During the postrevolutionary period, the Mexican state attempted to incorporate the country’s indigenous group into the nation. During the Cárdenas years, this project of indigenismo reached a crescendo as the officials from the Ministry of Public Education and the newly formed Autonomous Department of Indigenous Issues traveled the country, blending the celebration of “autochthonous” indigenous cultures with the implementation of hygiene, agriculture, and education campaigns. While some works (Dawson 2004, Hewitt de Alcántara 1984, Knight 1990, Lewis 2006) have examined the campaign’s ideological parameters, others have sought to investigate the policy’s local implementation in Chiapas (Lewis 2005, Rus 1994) and in Oaxaca (Smith 2008).
  300.  
  301. Dawson, Alexander S. Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona, 2004.
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  303. A clear, concise examination of the intellectual history of indigenismo from the Revolution through to the period of Cardenismo. Contains extremely useful information on radical “indianist” thinkers who sought to secure self-determination for indigenous groups and claimed that Mexican society should be based on what they deemed as positive indigenous values and social systems.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia. Anthropological Perspectives on Rural Mexico. Boston: Routledge, 1984.
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  307. A clear intellectual history of the indigenista anthropologists of the immediate postrevolutionary period and beyond. Although, like many studies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the work criticizes early anthropologists for attempting to “modernize” and “incorporate” indigenous groups, the author acknowledges that Cardenista anthropologists benefited from the president’s stress on practical engagement and, at least briefly, moved away from incorporationist positions.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Knight, Alan. “Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940.” In The Idea of Race in Latin America (1870–1940). Edited by Richard Graham, 71–113. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
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  311. An excellent short overview of indigenismo in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. Knight is one of the first scholars to attempt to link top-down ideological assumptions with grassroots implementation.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Lewis, Stephen E. The Ambivalent Revolution: Forging State and Nation in Chiapas, 1910–1945. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
  314. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. One of the best regional studies of the links among regional politics, education, and indigenismo. Demonstrates how certain Chiapas groups managed to harness indigenista policies to improve their social and political standing, while in other cases, rural caciques manipulated government rhetoric to forge traditional power bases.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Lewis, Stephen E. “The Nation, Education, and the ‘Indian Problem’ in Mexico.” In The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940. Edited by Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, 176–195. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006.
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  319. Another excellent short essay on indigenismo in postrevolutionary Mexico. Concentrates on how indigenista thought shaped educational approaches to indigenous groups.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Rus, Jan. “The Communidad Revolucionaria Institucional—Subversion of Native Government in Chiapas, 1936–1968.” In Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico. Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, 265–300. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1994.
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  323. A genuinely pathbreaking account of the local effects of indigenismo in highland Chiapas. Here, state-backed bilingual locals harnessed government policies in order to gain state support, exert control over monolingual Mayan communities, and link them to the PRI.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Smith, Benjamin. “Inventing Tradition at Gunpoint: Culture, Caciquismo and State Formation in the Región Mixe, Oaxaca (1930–1959).” Bulletin of Latin American Research 27.2 (2008): 215–234.
  326. DOI: 10.1111/j.1470-9856.2008.00264.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. A concise article on the effects of indigenismo in the Región Mixe in Oaxaca. Demonstrates the link among indigenismo, education, and the establishment of broadly autonomous, autocratic cacicazgos. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Environmental Histories
  330.  
  331. In the first decade of the 21st century, US and Mexican historians have started to embed research on agrarian reform within the broader literature on environmental history. While Mexican historians have taken advantage of the superb collection at the Archivo Histórico del Agua to map out the links between water rights and agrarian reform (Aboites Aguilar 1998, Castañeda González 1995), US historians have looked at the connections between government environmental policy and regional implementation. It must be noted that only a few environmental histories deal explicitly with Cardenismo (Boyer 2007, Wakild 2011, Wakild and Boyer 2012). Most take a more median-durée approach covering a number of decades (Santiago 2006).
  332.  
  333. Aboites Aguilar, Luis. El agua de la nación: Una historia política de México (1888–1946). Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1998.
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  335. An excellent piece of research on the politics of water management from the Porfiriato through to the mid-20th century. There is substantial work on Cardenismo in the book.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Boyer, Christopher R. “Revolución y paternalismo ecológico: Miguel Ángel de Quevedo y la política forestal, 1926–1940.” Historia Mexicana 57.1 (July–September 2007): 91–138.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. An extremely good essay on the father of the Mexican forestry industry, Miguel Ángel de Quevedo. Boyer looks at his paternalistic approach to both the exploitation and the conservation of the environment.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Castañeda González, Rocío. Irrigación y reforma agraria: Las comunidades de riego del Valle de Santa Rosalía, Chihuahua 1920–1945. Mexico City: Comisión Nacional del Agua, CIESAS, 1995.
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  343. An interesting local study on the implementation of irrigation projects in the Valley of Santa Rosalía in Chihuahua during the postrevolutionary period.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Santiago, Myrna I. The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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  347. A pathbreaking work of history, which looks at the environmental effects of the oil industry in the Huasteca. The book ends with a discussion of the Cárdenas era.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Wakild, Emily. Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011.
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  351. An interesting and original examination of the social and cultural effects of the Revolution’s national parks project, which created more than forty national parks. Cárdenas was instrumental to the project and promoted many progressive ideas about environmental development.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Wakild, Emily, and Christopher Boyer. “Social Landscaping in the Forests of Mexico: An Environmental Interpretation of Cardenismo.” Hispanic American Historical Review 92.1 (February 2012): 73–106.
  354. DOI: 10.1215/00182168-1470977Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355. A provocative new interpretation of Cardenismo, which locates agrarian reform within a broader process of “social landscaping” designed to rationalize and expand the use of natural resources. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Regional Histories
  358.  
  359. Many of the works on Cardenismo are regional studies. The fashion for this type of studies started in the late 1970s and continued until the early 2000s. Although most historians still pay lip service to the importance of standalone regional histories, most scholars have moved on to look at broad thematic trends or multiple regions. Despite this, regional histories can still offer demonstrate the varieties and limits of Cardenismo (Guzmán Flores 1992, Navarro Valdez 2005, Romero 1988, Smith 2009). At the same time, many scholars often use regional histories to examine certain elements of the Cardenista project. Fowler-Salamini 1978 examines agrarismo, Bantjes 1998 state iconoclasm, and Fallaw 2001 center-state relations and electoral politics.
  360.  
  361. Bantjes, Adrian A. As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998.
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  363. Bantjes’s excellent work combines acute study of regional politics and local social hierarchies with an interesting piece on state anticlericalism and iconoclasm.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Fallaw, Ben. Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press: 2001.
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  367. An excellent regional study of the effects of Cardenismo in the Yucatán. Fallaw combines original work on local electoral processes with a broad overview of the effects of Yucatán’s land reform movement.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Fowler-Salamini, Heather. Agrarian Radicalism in Veracruz 1920–1938. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
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  371. One of the best regional studies. Fowler-Salamini argues that Cárdenas’s presidency ushered in the defeat of Veracruz’s radical agraristas.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Guzmán Flores, Guillermo. “El Cardenismo y la nueva democracia.” In Historia de la cuestión agraria mexicana: Estado de Zacatecas. Vol. 2, 1940. Edited by Ramón Vera Salvo, 243–256. Mexico City: Juan Pablos, 1992.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. A clear essay on the agrarian effects of Cardenismo in Zacatecas.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Navarro Valdez, Pavel Leonardo. El cardenismo en Durango: Historia y política regional 1934–1940. Durango, Mexico: Instituto de Cultura de Estado de Durango, 2005.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. An excellent overview of Cardenismo in the northern state of Durango. He combines a good feel for regional politics with discussion of the massive agrarian effort in the La Laguna region.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Romero, Laura Patricia, coord. Jalisco desde la revolucion: Movimientos sociales, 1929–1940. Guadalajara, Mexico: Colegio de Jalisco, 1988.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. Broad introduction to the effects of postrevolutionary policies in Jalisco.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Smith, Benjamin. Pistoleros and Popular Movements: The Politics of State Formation in Postrevolutionary Oaxaca. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
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  387. Smith looks at the effects of Cardenista politics throughout the state of Oaxaca. He concentrates on the creation of multiple relatively autonomous cacicazgos and the varied effects of land reform.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Caciques and Caciquismo
  390.  
  391. The prevalence and importance of rural and urban intermediaries or caciques for the implementation of Cardenista strategies has led to the creation of a subfield of cacique studies. Early works on caciquismo argued that, during the 1930s, modern caciques, well versed in the manipulation of bureaucratic power, replaced more traditional revolutionary caciques, who had relied on charisma, the ad hoc disbursement of spoils, kinship, and ties to local groups (Brading 1980, Buve 1994, Knight 1980). Few scholars would dismiss this argument outright, and it has been recently restated with considerable force by Guerra Manzo 2002. More recent scholarship has attempted to demonstrate the ways in which Cardenista caciques employed both traditional and modern tactics in order to satisfy federal requirements and local demands (Butler 2005, Knight and Pansters 2005). Other authors have pointed to the role of caciques not only as political intermediaries but also as key cultural brokers (De la Peña 1988).
  392.  
  393. Brading, D. A., ed. Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
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  395. One of the first collections on caudillos and caciques in modern Mexico. Brading and Knight give clear introductions, while numerous scholars demonstrate the regional variants of caciquismo throughout Mexico.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Butler, Matthew. “God’s Caciques: Caciquismo and the Cristero Revolt in Coalcomán.” In Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Edited by Alan Knight and Wil Pansters, 94–112. London: ILAS, 2005.
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  399. Here, Butler explains the ways in which local caciques employed both traditional means of local control and new links to the state and federal bureaucracies to carve out distinct fiefdoms. At the same time, he also demonstrates how Cárdenas, by supporting the claim of former Cristero leaders, managed to pay off right-wing Catholic groups.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Buve, Raymund. El movimiento revolucionario en Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, 1994.
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  403. Buve’s collection of essays on late-19th- and early-20th-century Tlaxcala contains an interesting essay on the rise of two modern caciques, Emilio Carvajal and Ruben C. Carrizosa, who came to dominate the ejidos of Huamantla.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. De la Peña, Guillermo. “Poder Local, Poder Regional: Perspectivas Socioantropológicas.” In Poder Local, Poder Regional. Edited by Jorge Padua and Alain Vanneph. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1988.
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  407. De la Peña’s oft-cited essay builds on the work of Eric Wolf to argue that rural caciques in Mexico play a distinct cultural role, brokering agreements between the state and rural peasants and indigenous groups.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Guerra Manzo, Enrique. Caciquismo y orden público en Michoacán, 1920–1940. Zamora, Mexico: Colegio de Michoacán, 2002.
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  411. An excellent regional study of the importance of caciques in Cárdenas’s home state. Guerra Manzo demonstrates that the transition from traditional to modern caciquismo still has substantial force.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Knight, Alan. “Peasant and Caudillo in Revolutionary Mexico 1910–1917.” In Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution. Edited by D. A. Brading, 17–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
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  415. Knight’s early essay on caciquismo tentatively argues for the transition from traditional to modern caciques and offers a broad overview of the field.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Knight, Alan, and Wil Pansters, eds. Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico. London: ILAS, 2005.
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  419. An excellent edited volume on caciques in 20th-century Mexico. Many essays deal explicitly with caciques during the Cárdenas period. Knight’s introduction and Pansters’s conclusion offer comprehensive overviews of the literature.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Governors
  422.  
  423. The study of governors, like the study of caciques, has become a subset of works on Cardenismo. Early studies tended to stress the decline of the freewheeling revolutionary governor and the rise of the centralizing, bureaucratic state. The examples of the radical anticlerical governor of Tabasco, Tomas Garrido Canabal (who lost power in 1935), and the San Luis Potosi governor, Saturnino Cedillo (who rebelled in 1938), were taken as representative of the general trend (Ankerson 1984, Falcón 1984, Martínez Assad 1979, Martínez Assad 1990). Recent studies have offered a more matizado picture. Scholars have started to examine Cardenista governors’ radical agrarian policies (Ervin 2009). Furthermore, by employing the case of Maximino Avila Camacho, governor of Puebla between 1937 and 1941, they have also traced the survival of more traditional caudillos (Henderson and LaFrance 2009). Ramírez Rancano 1988 looks at the Tlaxcala governor, Adolfo Bonilla. He focuses on the survival of the governor, despite his support for disgraced former president Plutarco Elias Calles.
  424.  
  425. Ankerson, Dudley. Agrarian Warlord: Saturnino Cedillo and the Mexican Revolution in San Luis Potosí. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984.
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  427. Ankerson’s study, released in the same year as Falcón’s, also looks at the rise and fall of Saturnino Cedillo.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Ervin, Michael A. “Marte R. Gómez of Tamaulipas: Governing Agrarian Revolution.” In State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1952: Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption. Edited by Júrgen Buchenau and William H. Beezley. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
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  431. Ervin’s portrait of Marte R. Gomez reveals another side of the bureaucratic governor. Ervin argues that Gomez’s genuine commitment to agrarian reform pushed through a successful program of agrarismo in the state.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Falcón, Romana. Revolución y caciquismo: San Luis Potosí, 1910–1938. Mexico City: El Collegio de México, 1984.
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  435. Falcón’s study looks at the rise and eventual fall of the San Luis Potosi revolutionary, Saturnino Cedillo. In 1938 Cedillo rebelled, as Cárdenas and his local allies tried to shift the strongman from power. He was killed by government forces in early 1939.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Henderson, Timothy, and David LaFrance. “Maximino Avila Camacho of Puebla.” In State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1952: Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption. Edited by Júrgen Buchenau and William H. Beezley. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. A concise study of one of Mexico’s last traditional governors, Maximino Avila Camacho. Maximino was politically conservative and often used violence in order to put down political enemies.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Martínez Assad, Carlos R. El laboratorio de la Revolución: El Tabasco garridista. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1979.
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  443. Classic early study of one of Mexico’s most infamous anticlerical governors, Tomas Garrido Canabal. Ends with Cárdenas’s move against the caudillo during 1935.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Martínez Assad, Carlos. Los rebeldes vencidos: Cedillo contra el estado cardenista. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Ecónomica, 1990.
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  447. Martínez Assad focuses on Cárdenas’s and his local allies’ attempts to rid San Luis Potosi of the strongman, his rebellion, and his final days.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Ramirez Rancano, Mario. “Violencia en Tlaxcala Bajo el Gobierno de Adolfo Bonilla.” In Estadistas, caciques y caudillos. Edited by Carlos Martínez Assad, 313–333. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, 1988.
  450. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. This concise article looks at the Tlaxcala governor, Adolfo Bonilla. Ramirez Rancano focuses on the survival of the governor, despite his support for disgraced former president Plutarco Elias Calles.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Women and Gender
  454.  
  455. In the 1930s, radical women, often linked to the broad church of Cardenismo, attempted to involve themselves in the social movements of the time, gain greater benefits for Mexican women, and above all, achieve the right to vote. Although traditional fears of female conservatism and docility prevented them from achieving their ultimate goal, they were integral to local agrarian movements, labor strikes, and Cardenista cultural programs. Historians of progressive women and gender dynamics during the Cardenista period have divided their works between broad national studies (Tunon Pablos 1992) and more intimate local studies. Olcott 2005 has elided the two to give an excellent impression of both top-down policy and grassroots implementation. Vaughan has also produced a series of excellent studies on the links between education and the role of women during the period (Olcott, et al. 2006, Vaughan 1990, Vaughan 1994, Vaughan 2000), and Schell and Mitchell 2007 offers excellent introductions to the field. Tunon offers an interesting take on cinema and gender stereotypes (Tunon 1998).
  456.  
  457. Olcott, Jocelyn. Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005.
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  459. The definitive book on women and politics during the postrevolutionary and Cardenista regimes. Combines excellent research on elite attitudes to women’s political involvement with in-depth research on their actual involvement in Mexico City, Acapulco, Yucatán, Michoacán, and the Comarca Lagunera.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Olcott, Jocelyn, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Gabriela Cano, eds. Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
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  463. A superb collection of essays on gender, labor, politics, and culture in the postrevolutionary period. While essays by Mary Kay Vaughan and Jocelyn Olcott offer a clear overview, essays on labor organizing by Maria Teresa Fernandez Acevez, Heather Fowler-Salamini, and Susan Gauss offer local studies of both the liberating and limiting effects of Cardenismo.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Schell, Patience, and Stephanie Mitchell. The Women’s Revolution: Mexico, 1900–1953. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
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  467. Another excellent collection of essays on women in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods. Stephanie Mitchell’s essay on women and antialcohol campaigns and Nichole Sander’s piece on motherhood and family are of particular interest to students of Cardenismo.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Tunon, Julia. Mujeres de la luz y sombra en el cine mexicano: La construccion de una imagen, 1939–1952. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1998.
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  471. An interesting cultural history of the portrayals of women in some of the most famous Mexican Golden Age films.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Tunon Pablos, Esperanza. Mujeres que se organizan: El Frente Unico pro derechos de la mujer, 1935–1938. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1992.
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. This book looks at the links between the national revolutionary party and female activists from the Mexican Communist Party. Despite notable victories, the narrative ends with defeat as the Senate refuses to ratify the women’s right to vote and Cárdenas, despite voicing support, refuses to overrule the decision.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Vaughan, Mary Kay. “Women School Teachers in the Mexican Revolution: The Story of Reyna’s Braids.” Journal of Women’s History 2 (1990): 143–168.
  478. DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2010.0282Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. A clear summary of the important role that women played as rural teachers during the socialist education campaigns of the 1930s.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Vaughan, Mary Kay. “Rural Women’s Literacy and Education during the Mexican Revolution: Subverting a Patriarchal Event?” In Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850–1990. Edited by Heather Fowler-Salamini and Mary Kay Vaughan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.
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  483. A concise, well-researched examination of the effects of literacy campaigns on the women during the postrevolutionary period. The author convincingly argues that as safety increased, early invasive attempts to modify women’s household roles were shelved, more women joined the teaching profession, and women increasingly attended revolutionary schools.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Vaughan, Mary Kay. “Modernizing Patriarchy: State Politics, Rural Households, and Women in Mexico, 1930–1940.” In Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America. Edited by Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux, 194–214. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2000.
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  487. A study of socialist education’s effects on gender relations in the Mexican countryside. Here, Vaughan stresses the importance of regional education policies on education’s local implementation.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Teachers and Education
  490.  
  491. Rural schooling was key to the Cardenista project. As Vaughan 1997 demonstrates, during the 1930s, socialist teachers fanned out across the Mexican countryside and attempted to imbue students with “modern” revolutionary ideas about hygiene, gender relations, citizenship, race, nationalism, and agricultural technology. At the same time, socialist teachers also attempted to usurp the position of village priests, often forming the most vocal propagandists of state anticlericalism. Although Mexico’s Marxist minister for education, Narciso Bassols, had enacted some anticlerical reforms in the early 1930s, the project reached a crescendo in December 1934 when the government changed Article 3 of the Constitution. It now read that education should be “socialist . . . and exclude all religious doctrine” and “combat fanaticism and prejudices” so that children would be given a “rational and exact concept of the universe and social life.” Although a few early studies of socialist education (Britton 1976, Lerner 1979, Raby 1974) suggested that in order to understand the regional ramifications of socialist education, it was necessary to combine top-down study of state ideology with the bottom-up analysis of local socioeconomic, political, and ethnic relations, it was not until Vaughan 1997 that historians made a serious attempt to undertake this task. These two works ushered in a slew of regional studies of socialist education throughout Mexico, including Quintanilla and Vaughan 1997 and Yankelevich 1993. Although most of these works tended to stress teachers’ daily negotiations, Becker 1995, a monograph on Michoacán, interpreted socialist educators as working to assert state dominance. Gillingham 2006 takes another tack, arguing that in many cases, rural teachers exploited their positions of power (like the priests before them) to carve out distinct regional power bases or cacicazgos.
  492.  
  493. Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán Peasants, and the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. The first work of new cultural history to deal with socialist education, the book looks at the effects of the program in the P’urepecha region of Michoacán.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Britton, John A. Educación y radicalismo en México. Mexico City: SEP, 1976.
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  499. An intellectual and institutional history of shifting Ministry of Public Education (SEP) ideologies and motivations during the 1930s. Although the work is a little less critical than subsequent works, it still provides a good overview.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Gillingham, Paul. “Ambiguous Missionaries: Rural Teachers and State Facades in Guerrero, 1930–1950.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 22.2 (Summer 2006): 331–360.
  502. DOI: 10.1525/msem.2006.22.2.331Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  503. A superb new study of teachers in Guerrero and Veracruz that acknowledges socialist educators’ redemptive roles, but also takes seriously teachers’ roles as economic exploiters and arriviste caciques.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Lerner, Victoria. La educacion socialista: Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, período 1934–1940. Vol. 17. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1979.
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  507. A clear overview of socialist education. Published as part of the excellent Historia de la Revolución series. Although it has been overshadowed by Raby and Britton’s works, it takes opposition to socialist education more seriously than either work.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Quintanilla, Susana, and Mary Kay Vaughan, eds. Escuela y sociedad en el periodo cardenista. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997.
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  511. A collection of the best local and regional studies on socialist education. Also contains a useful overview of the historiography and the topic by Quintanilla and Vaughan.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Raby, David L. Educación y revolución social en México, 1921–1940. Mexico City: SEP, 1974.
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  515. One of the first studies of socialist education. Contains useful analysis of the shifting ideologies of the SEP as well as data on the number of socialist teachers murdered during the period.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Vaughan, Mary Kay. Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.
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  519. The outstanding book on socialist education in Mexico. Includes analysis of SEP intentions, teacher training, and regional educational programs as well as fine-grained local studies of the effects of socialist education in Puebla and Sonora.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Yankelevich, Pablo. La batalla por el dominio de las conciencias: La experiencia de la educación socialista en Jalisco, 1934–1940. Guadalajara, Mexico: Colegio de Jalisco, 1993.
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  523. A fine regional study of the effects of socialist education in the extremely Catholic state of Jalisco. Here, church authorities, priests, and lay men and women bitterly opposed what they perceived as state-backed atheism.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Religion and the Catholic Church
  526.  
  527. Although Reich 1996 argues that after the end of the Cristero war in 1929 both church and state officials made an under-the-table pact to avoid further conflict, struggles between Catholics and revolutionaries continued into the next decade. While Mexican intellectuals attempted to impose anticlerical policies on country’s believers, priests and parishioners adopted a series of strategies to avoid state regimentation. As Padilla Rangel 2001, Blancarte 1992, and Aspe Armella 2008 argue, the church’s harnessing of the organizational structure of Mexican Catholic Action (ACM) channeled opposition to the state away from violent conflict and toward demonstrations, strikes, and rhetorical debates. Women played a key role in these resistance movements, particularly against state-backed socialist education. As Smith 2005 and Septién Torres 2009 argue, distinct regional histories of priest-parishioner interaction generated diverse local responses to state anticlerical policies. Finally, volumes 4 and 5 of González Navarro 2000, the author’s magnum opus on confrontations between agraristas and Cristeros, deals with the Cárdenas period.
  528.  
  529. Aspe Armella, Maria Luisa. La formación social y política de los católicos mexicanos. Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano de Doctrina Social Cristiana, 2008.
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  531. An excellent and much-needed overview of the institutional structure and ideology of the ACM. Although there is little discussion of the local functioning of the ACM, copious research in the Universidad Iberoamericano’s ACM archive provides valuable insights into the church hierarchy’s intentions.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Blancarte, Roberto. Historia de la Iglesia Católica en México, 1929–1982. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.
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  535. Still the best overview of the history of the church in the 20th century. Early chapters deal with the revival of the church during the Cardenista period.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. González Navarro, Moisés. Cristeros y agraristas en Jalisco. Vols. 4 and 5. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 2000.
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  539. Volumes 4 and 5 of Moisés González Navarro’s work deal with the confrontations between Cristeros and agraristas in Jalisco during the Cárdenas period. Church authorities and local priests often play important roles in both tempering confrontation and regimenting local Catholics. The two volumes demonstrate a quite remarkable degree of research.
  540. Find this resource:
  541. Padilla Rangel, Yolanda. Después de la tempestad: La reorganización católica en Aguascalientes, 1929–1950. Zamora, Mexico: Colegio de Michoacán, 2001.
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  543. One of the best regional studies of Catholicism in Mexico. By focusing on the small, central diocese of Aguascalientes, Padilla Rangel manages to tease out the complex relationships among bishops, priests, parishioners, and state officials.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Reich, Peter L. Mexico’s Hidden Revolution: The Catholic Church in Law and Politics since 1929. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. An interesting and provocative study, which argues that church officials constructed an under-the-table agreement with state officials during the 1930s to avoid further violent conflict.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Septién Torres, Valentina. “Guanajuato y la Resistencia católica en el siglo XX.” In Integrados y marginados en el México posrevoluciónario: Los juegos de poder local y sus nexus con la política naciónal. Edited by Nicolás Cárdenas García and Enrique Guerra Manzo, 83–119. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2009.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Valentina Septién Torres demonstrates how radical Catholics in Guanajuato embraced the hierarchical system of ACM but then used the organization’s institutional weight to resist both socialist and sexual education.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Smith, Benjamin. “Anticlericalism and Resistance: The Diocese of Huajuapam de León, 1930–1940.” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2005): 474–483.
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  555. A regional study of the effects of socialist education in the diocese of Huajuapam de León, Oaxaca. Argues that local rhythms of priest-parishioner interaction generated distinct responses to the state policy. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Anticlericalism
  558.  
  559. Between 1920 and 1940, successive revolutionary governments not only sought to placate land-starved peasants, harness popular support, and change socioeconomic relations, but also, like so many other radical states, to create “new men.” Brought up within a tradition of Enlightenment anticlericalism and embittered by ecclesiastical involvement in the Huerta coup of 1913, northern revolutionaries especially saw the removal of the church’s rural power as a central tenet of this “veritable cultural revolution” (Adrian Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution [Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998], 7). During the Cárdenas era, government authorities sought to remove the church from the sphere of education and introduce a series of civic and cultural celebrations designed to denigrate the church. As these national policies filtered down toward Mexico’s state governments, they developed distinct regional hues. In some states, radical comecura revolutionaries, what visiting US priest Wilfred Parsons called the “wild men of the party,” persecuted clerics, humiliated the devout, sacked churches, and burned saints (Wilfred Parsons, Mexican Martyrdom [New York: Macmillan, 1936], 134). In contrast, in other regions, less virulent state governors, like Saturnino Cedillo in San Luis Potosí, Bartolomé García Correa in Yucatán, and Carlos Riva Palacio in Mexico State, tempered national laws, turned a blind eye toward cult practice, and effectively cut a deal of noninterference with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Over the first decade of the 21st century, historians have attempted to locate, disaggregate, and map out these different species of national- and local-level anticlericalism. Meyer 1992 and Bantjes 1997, on anticlerical modus operandi and often disastrous effects, led the way. Recently, Fallaw 2009 and Knight 2007 have supplemented these works with their authors’ own typologies. At the same time, Smith 2009 and Bautista Garcia 2005 have examined the role of Masons in both generating and popularizing anticlerical policies.
  560.  
  561. Bantjes, Adrian. “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Revolutionary Mexico: The De-Christianization Campaigns, 1929–1940.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 13.1 (Winter 1997): 87–120.
  562. DOI: 10.2307/1051867Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  563. An excellent article on state anticlericalism and its often-doomed implementation. By employing a theoretical framework drawn from scholarship on the French Revolution, Bantjes delineates both constructive and destructive anticlerical strategies. As the title suggests, he focuses on the symbolic violence of idolatry and iconoclasm.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Bautista García, Cecilia Adriana. “Maestros y Masones: La contienda por la reforma educativa en México, 1930–1940.” Relaciones 104 (2005): 219–276.
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  567. Another article on the ideological links between Freemasonry and socialist educators of the Cardenista era.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Fallaw, Ben. “‘Anti-Priests’ versus Catholic-Socialists in 1930s Campeche: Federal Teachers, Revolutionary Communes, and Anticlericalism.” In Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico. Edited by Matthew Butler, 203–224. London: Palgrave, 2007.
  570. DOI: 10.1057/9780230608801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. An excellent local study of the rather unanticipated effects of anticlericalism in Campeche during the 1930s.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Fallaw, Ben. “Varieties of Mexican Revolutionary Anticlericalism: Radicalism, Iconoclasm, and Otherwise, 1914–1935.” The Americas 65.4 (April 2009): 481–509.
  574. DOI: 10.1353/tam.0.0106Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. Another good overview of the varieties of Mexican anticlericalism. Although most of the article deals with anticlericalism’s revolutionary roots, there are plenty of good insights into the anticlericalism of the early Cardenista years.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Knight, Alan. “The Mentality and Modus Operandi of Revolutionary Anticlericalism.” In Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico. Edited by Matthew Butler, 21–56. London: Palgrave, 2007.
  578. DOI: 10.1057/9780230608801Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579. A superb, sweeping overview of the ideological roots and types of revolutionary anticlericalism. He pays special attention to the interaction between official and popular anticlericalism, drawing out the relationship between the two. Although much of the article deals with anticlericalism’s post-Enlightenment history, a substantial part also concerns anticlericalism during the Cárdenas era.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Meyer, Jean. “El Anticlerical revolucionario, 1910–1940.” In Las formas y las políticas del Dominio Agrario: Homenaje a François Chavilier. Edited by Ricardo Avila Palafox, Carlos Martínez Assad, and Jean Meyer, 284–306. Guadalajara, Mexico: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. One of the first explicit works on Mexican anticlericalism. Portrays most anticlericals as northern revolutionaries and concentrates on the development of anticlericalism in the 1920s.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Smith, Benjamin. “Anticlericalism, Politics, and Freemasonry in Mexico, 1920–1940.” The Americas 65.4 (April 2009): 559–588.
  586. DOI: 10.1353/tam.0.0109Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. An article on the links between Masons and anticlericalism in the postrevolutionary period. Includes a final section on the emergence of a Cardenista Masonic lodge and the links between state building and Masonic lodges in Oaxaca.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Right-Wing Groups
  590.  
  591. During the Cardenista period, land distribution, labor reform, and socialist education generated considerable opposition from landowners, ranchers, industrialists, pious Catholics, and certain peasant groups. The Catholic Church often managed to channel this opposition through control of the Mexican Catholic Action. However, other opponents formed broadly autonomous groups. Sherman 1997 provides a broad overview of the movements, although the author concentrates on their ideological roots. Some, such as the Sinarquistas (Aguilar V. and Zermeño P. 1992, Meyer 2003, Serrano Álvarez 1992) and the Camisas Doradas (Gojman de Backal 2000, Pérez Montfort 1986), sought formal political recognition and national scope. Others, such as La Mano Negra in Veracruz (Santoyo 1995) and Los del Monte in Sinaloa (Ponce 1993), were more limited in scope.
  592.  
  593. Aguilar V. Ruben, and Guillermo Zermeño P. Religión, política y sociedad: El sinarquismo y la iglesia en Mexico (nueve ensayos). Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1992.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. An excellent collection of essays on the Sinarquista movement. Unlike other works, the authors deal explicitly with the links between the church and the movement as well as regional diversity within the group.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Gojman de Backal, Alicia. Camisas, escudos y desfiles militares: Los Dorados y el antisemitismo en México (1934–1940). Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Escuela Nacional de Estudios Profesionales Acatlán, 2000.
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  599. A comprehensive treatment of the Camisas Doradas movement, the Mexican fascist movement started by General Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco in 1933. The book places the Mexican movement within the broad setting of international fascism extremely well.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Meyer, Jean. El sinarquismo, el cardenismo y la iglesia. Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2003.
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  603. Meyer, the expert on the relationship between religion and politics in modern Mexico, brings his talents to bear on the Sinarquista movement. The result is a concise but intelligent treatment of the movement.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. “Los Camisas Doradas.” Secuencia 4 (1986): 66–78.
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  607. One of the first articles on the Camisas Doradas, a Mexican anti-Semitic, quasifascist organization.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Ponce, Francisco. Lo que el tiempo no se llevo: Los conflitos agrariaos en el sur de Sinaloa durante el period Cardenista, 1935–1940. Culiacan, Mexico: UAS, 1993.
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  611. An examination of agraristas and their opponents in the southern municipalities of Sinaloa during the late 1930s. Their opponents were an alliance of landowners, textile factory owners, and upland ranchers and were called “Los del Monte.”
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Santoyo, Antonio. La Mano Negra: Poder regional y estado en México (Veracruz, 1928–1943). Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1995.
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  615. A study of Manuel Parra Mata, who led an alliance of sugar producers and sugar merchants against Veracruz’s agrarista groups during the 1930 and early 1940s. The group’s pistoleros took advantage of the disarming of followers of Governor Tejeda in order to murder close to two thousand agraristas.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Serrano Álvarez, Pablo. La batalla del espíritu: El movimiento sinarquista en El Bajío (1932–1951). 2 vols. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1992.
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  619. An excellent, comprehensive, two-volume history of the Sinarquista movement from its inception to its demise. Although Serrano Álvarez deals extensively with the intellectual roots of the movement, he also looks at the social bases of the Unión Nacional Sinarquista.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Sherman, John W. The Mexican Right: The End of Revolutionary Reform, 1929–1940. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997.
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  623. A good overview of the intellectual rationale and the political narrative of secular and Catholic right-wing movements in 1930s Mexico.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Revolutionary Culture and the Public Sphere
  626.  
  627. Cardenismo was not simply about land distribution, labor reform, and education. During the period, bureaucrats and intellectuals used a wide variety of cultural forms in order to instill certain modern, revolutionary values in the country’s peasants and workers. Murals on government buildings; civic festivals celebrating revolutionary heroes; and magazines, newspapers, and radio programs proclaiming the importance of hygiene and hard work dominated the public sphere. In the first decade of the 21st century, studies of these cultural programs have overshadowed other historical works, especially, but not exclusively in US academia. Most scholars have concentrated on single cultural forms or discursive themes (Beezley, et al. 1994; Covo 1996; Hayes 2000; Lopez 2010; Mraz 2009), but Knight has written an excellent and thoughtful article on the subject (Knight 1994) and Vaughan and Lewis 2006 brings together many of the best works in one edited volume.
  628.  
  629. Beezley, William H., Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French. Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994.
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. One of the first works to deal explicitly with the cultural effects of state-building in 19th- and 20th-century Mexico. Beezley, Martin, and French concentrate on the mechanics and effects of civic festivals. Essays by Frischmann, Vaughan, Loyo, and Bantjes examine Cardenismo.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Covo, Jacqueline. “El periodico al servicio del cardenismo: El Nacional, 1935.” Historia Mexicana 46.1 (1996): 133–161.
  634. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635. A short but often-overlooked essay on the major government newspaper of the period, El Nacional.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. Hayes, Joy Elizabeth. Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920–1950. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
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  639. A concise examination of the relationship between state formation and radio in Mexico. The topic is extremely important and Hayes has drawn out some good conclusions. Yet, it is clear there is much more to be done.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Knight, Alan. “Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910–1940.” Hispanic American Historical Review 74.3 (August 1994): 393–444.
  642. DOI: 10.2307/2517891Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  643. An excellent review of the relationship between elite and popular culture during the Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Knight brings his usual fine writing, exhaustive knowledge of secondary literature, and acute sensibility to the subject.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Lopez, Rick A. Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State after the Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
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  647. An interesting examination of the links among revolutionary politics, indigenista ideology, and artisan crafts. The book is divided into two parts. One part deals with the intellectual bases of indigenista art. The other part looks at artisanal production in Guerrero.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Mraz, John. Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
  650. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  651. A broad overview of visual culture, politics, and nation building from the late 19th through the 20th century. While chapter 2 deals explicitly with revolutionary culture, chapter 3 looks at Golden Age cinema, which overlapped with Cardenismo.
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Vaughan, Mary K., and Stephen Lewis. The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
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  655. An excellent edited volume on the cultural history of postrevolutionary Mexico. Works by Lewis on indigenismo, Vaughan on music, and Bantjes on religion are particularly good. Lomnitz provides an interesting and provocative conclusion.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Health Care and Social Services
  658.  
  659. During the 1930s, health and other social services increased exponentially, as the state rolled back the influence of the charity organizations of the Catholic Church and sought to solve Mexico’s serious inequalities. At the international level, Cárdenas continued to deal with the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division, which continued its 1920s work on eradicating yellow fever and hookworm (Birn 1998, Birn 2006). At the national level, Cárdenas tripled the Departamento de Salubridad Pública’s budget and created a new system, which offered medical care to the beneficiaries of agrarian reform (Kapelusz-Poppi 2001). Other reforms in social services, which concentrated on provision for mothers and children, paralleled these rural campaigns (Blum 2006, Dion 2005, Sanders 2011).
  660.  
  661. Birn, Anne-Emanuelle. “A Revolution in Rural Health? The Struggle over Local Health Units in Mexico, 1928–1940.” Journal of the History of Medicine 53 (January 1998): 70.
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  663. An excellent overview of Birn’s work on the conflicts between national and international health agencies in Mexico during the 1930s.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Birn, Anne-Emanuelle. Marriage of Convenience: Rockefeller International Health and Revolutionary Mexico. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006.
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  667. A fascinating and well-researched monograph on the relationship between the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division and the Mexican government’s Departamento de Salubridad Pública. The relationship between Cárdenas and Rockefeller is particularly well drawn.
  668. Find this resource:
  669. Blum, Ann. “Breaking and Making Families: Adoption and Public Welfare, Mexico City, 1938–1942.” In Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics and Power in Modern Mexico. Edited by Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughn, and Gabriela Cano, 127–144. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
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  671. An excellent introduction to Blum’s work on the links among mothers, children, and the state in 19th- and 20th-century Mexico. This work looks at the development of public welfare institutions designed to deal with adoption.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Dion, Michelle. “The Origins of Social Security in Mexico during the Cárdenas and Avila Camacho Administrations.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 21.1 (Winter 2005): 59–95.
  674. DOI: 10.1525/msem.2005.21.1.59Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  675. A concise but well-laid-out introduction to the creation of social security infrastructure during the Cárdenas era.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Kapelusz-Poppi, Ana María. “Physician Activists and the Development of Rural Health in Postrevolutionary Mexico.” Radical History Review 80 (Spring 2001): 35–50.
  678. DOI: 10.1215/01636545-2001-80-35Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  679. An excellent introduction to the experiences of rural doctors in Cardenista Mexico. The author examines the efforts and struggles of doctors from the Colegio de San Nicolás in Michoacán.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Sanders, Nichole. Gender and Welfare in Mexico: The Consolidation of a Postrevolutionary State. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
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  683. An excellent, if concise, introduction to the early years of social welfare in Mexico. Sanders places the expansion of health care within the context of larger shifts in gender and state-society relations.
  684. Find this resource:
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