- This article is about Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas del Río. For his grandson, see Lázaro Cárdenas Batel. For the town see Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (May 21, 1895 – October 19, 1970) was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.
Lázaro Cárdenas was born into a lower-middle class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán. He supported his family (including his mother and 7 younger siblings) from age 16 on after the death of his father. By the age of 18 he had worked as a tax collector, a printer's devil, and a jailkeeper. Although he left school at the age of eleven, he used every opportunity to educate himself and read widely throughout his life, especially works of history.
Cárdenas originally set his sights at becoming a teacher, but was drawn into politics and the military during the Mexican Revolution after Victoriano Huerta overthrew President Francisco Madero. He backed Plutarco Elías Calles, and after Calles became president, Cárdenas became governor of Michoacán in 1928. He became known for his progressive program of building roads and schools, promoting education, and land reform, as well as the unusually strict honesty of his administration.
Presidential career
Calles continued to dominate Mexico after his presidency with administrations that were his puppets. He selected Cárdenas to be the ruling party's presidential candidate on the assumption that he could control Cárdenas as he had controlled others. Cárdenas's first move once he took office late in 1934 was to have his presidential salary cut in half. Even more surprising moves would follow. After establishing himself in the presidency, Cárdenas had Calles and dozens of his corrupt associates arrested or deported to the United States, a decision that was greeted with great enthusiasm by the majority of the Mexican public.
Cárdenas is considered by many historians to be the creator of a political system that lasted in Mexico until the end of the 1980s. Central to this project was the organization of corporatist structures for trade unions, campesino (peasant) organizations, and middle-class professionals and office workers within the reorganized ruling party, now renamed the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). During Cardenas's presidency, the government redistributed millions of acres of land to peasants, and urban and industrial workers gained unprecedented unionization rights and wage increases. However, Cardenas and subsequent presidents also used the PRM and its successor, the Party of the Institutional Revolution, or PRI, to maintain political control; leaders of the worker and campesino organizations delivered votes and suppressed protests in exchange for personal favors and concessions to their constituencies.
Oil expropriation
- Main article: Expropiación petrolera
Also central to Cardenas's project were nationalistic economic policies involving Mexico's vast oil production, which had soared following strikes in 1910 in the area known as the "Golden Lane," near Tampico, and which made Mexico the world's second-largest oil producer by 1921, supplying approximately 20 percent of domestic demand in the United States.
Cárdenas's efforts to negotiate with Mexican Eagle, in the managerial control of Royal Dutch/Shell, and Standard Oil of New Jersey were unavailing, and the companies rejected a solution proposed by a presidential commission. So at 9:45 p.m. on the evening of March 18, 1938, Cárdenas nationalized Mexico's petroleum reserves and expropriated the equipment of the foreign oil companies in Mexico. The announcement inspired a spontaneous six-hour parade in Mexico City; it was followed by a national fund-raising campaign to compensate the companies.
Even though compensation for the expropriated assets was included in this legislation, the act angered the international business community and vexed foreign governments, especially Great Britain. The government was more worried about the lack of the technical knowledge required to run the refineries, specially on how to obtain a critical chemical component needed to obtain gasoline from oil; without it, the refineries were worthless. Before leaving, the oil companies had made sure they did not leave behind anything of help to the Mexican government, hoping to force Cárdenas to accept their conditions. On Cárdenas instructions, an elite team of around 30 engineers and gifted students were tasked to discover how to obtain the needed chemical before the national fuel reserves ran out in a matter of weeks. They were on the verge on achieving their goal when an apparently accidental explosion killed them all. A second team was assembled and they succeeded; Cárdenas sent to each president of the oil companies a little box with a vial filled with the Mexican formula.
The British severed diplomatic relations with Cárdenas's government, and Mexican oil and other goods were boycotted, despite an international ruling in favor of Mexico's government. However, with the outbreak of World War II, oil became a highly sought-after commodity. Mexico began to export oil to Nazi Germany. The United States and Britain decided this was unacceptable, so they settled their grievances with Mexico and ended the boycott. Mexican Eagle and Royal Dutch/Shell held out longer and received a better deal after the conclusion of the war.
The Mexican company that Cárdenas founded, Petróleos Mexicanos (or Pemex), would later be a model for other nations seeking greater control over their own oil and natural gas resources and is the most important source of income for the country, despite weakening finances. Seeing the need to assure the technical expertise needed to run it, Cárdenas founded the National Polytechnic Institute.
Post presidential career
After his presidential term, Cárdenas served as Mexico's secretary of defense through 1945.
It is often said that Lázaro Cárdenas was the only president from the PRI who did not use the office to make himself wealthy. He retired to a modest home by Lake Pátzcuaro and worked the rest of his life supervising irrigation projects and promoting free medical clinics and education for the nation's poor. He also continued to speak out about international political issues and in favor of greater democracy and human rights in Latin America, despite his own rule being less than perfectly democratic.
Cárdenas cultivated a brand of personality cult that revered his intentions and ignored the consequences of his actions. For example, he is dearly remembered for his agrarian reform, which expropiated land from owners and put it under the control of Cárdenas political party. But the lack of property rights that has remained in the Mexican countryside ever since has thrown millions of people into abject poverty and triggered the phenomenom of immigration and urban pauperization. Nevertheless the image of Cárdenas is often invoked as an example of positive policies in favor of the poor.
Lázaro Cárdenas died of cancer in Mexico City. His son Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano and his grandson Lázaro Cárdenas Batel have been prominent Mexican politicians.
In his honor, a number of cities and towns in Mexico, including Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, many smaller communities, and many streets have been named after him, including the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico City, and highways in Guadalajara and Monterrey.
See also: History of Mexico
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1zaro_C%C3%A1rdenas_del_R%C3%ADo under GFDL
