The Crisis of Cardenismo

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Abstract
By April 1938, Lázaro Cárdenas had altered the course of modern Mexican history. The hacienda system had virtually disappeared to be replaced by smallholdings and by collective and semi-collective ejidos. The church-state quarrel, cause of so much bloodshed in the 1920s, had largely subsided; the Catholic Church had supported the government against the foreign oil companies, even seeking to help the government collect money to pay for the nationalization. Both the nation's agrarian and urban workers had formed powerful, well-organized unions ready and able to defend their members' newly won gains. Most important to subsequent developments, however, was the government's expropriation of the foreign oil companies in March of 1938. The oil companies had defied every twentieth-century Mexican government; nationalization temporarily united Mexicans as never before in the nation's history. Although these accomplishments, especially the land reform and oil expropriation, established Cárdenas's credentials as the most radical of modern Mexican presidents, his subsequent behaviour has made many, especially on the extreme left, question his sincerity.

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