New History of Modern Latin America by Clayton Lawrence A

Author:Clayton, Lawrence A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520289024
Publisher: University of California Press

Figure 16.3 Lázaro Cárdenas (front row, center), shown here with oil union leaders in 1938. He served as president from 1934 to 1940. His military career, 1934 presidential campaign, and widespread travels took him to the most remote corners of the country. His patient, receptive manner led many poor people to call him Tata (Father) Lázaro. Acme Newspictures. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The foreign companies expected the U.S. State Department and White House to give them full backing, so they submitted huge claims to the Mexican government: $200 million for the U.S. properties and $250 million for the British. Cárdenas countered with an offer of $10 million, saying that he would pay only for actual capital investment, not untapped oil reserves. Besides, he stated, most oil firms had long since paid off their capital and equipment costs in the form of excessive profits.

The expropriation was enormously popular among Mexicans, who sensed in it a moment of nationalist pride in which Mexico had resisted the Goliath to the north. University students held parades in enthusiastic support and the Catholic Church had Sunday collections to help pay for the indemnity. As U.S. ambassador Josephus Daniels stated, Mexican women “poured out of their homes by the thousands to voice their ardent support of the leaders who had somehow made the people feel that the oil exploiters were the enemies of their country.” In an almost “religious festival,” they gathered together in front of the Palace of Fine Arts and sacrificed “wedding rings, bracelets, earrings, and put them, as it seemed to them, on a national altar.” Crowds offered everything from “gold and silver to animals and corn.”3 While Mexican women would have to wait until the 1950s to gain suffrage, this was a key moment of mass nationalist political participation.

In the next two years the companies waged a vicious campaign to force Mexico to return their assets or pay their claims. President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to intervene, however, because his ambassador there, Josephus Daniels, convinced him that the companies had erred in defying the Supreme Court decision and that they had gotten what they deserved. The coming of World War II and the need for good relations with this key supplier of oil and minerals also influenced Roosevelt’s response. The two governments eventually set up an arbitration commission that awarded the U.S. companies $24 million in 1941.

Late in 1938 Cárdenas decided to restructure the official party. Renamed the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM), it now embraced four sectors: the existing ones of labor, agraristas, and the army, plus a new one, popular groups. These latter were in fact mostly public servants who could be manipulated by the bureaucracy and the president. By the late 1930s the CTM claimed 1.25 million members, the National Peasant Confederation (CNC) 2.5 million, the military its highest authorized strength at 55,000, and the popular groups 55,000. Significantly, in 1938 soldiers were given the right to vote, which enhanced the influence of junior officers, who could broker the votes of their troops.

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