Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlasaɾo ˈkaɾðenas] ; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican revolutionary, army officer, and politician who served as the 51st president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revolution and as Governor of Michoacán and President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He later served as the Secretary of National Defence. During his presidency, which is considered the end of the Maximato, he implemented massive land reform programs, led the nationalization of the country's oil industry, and implemented a welfare state. Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the Mexican Revolution and became a general in the Constitutionalist Army. Although he was not from the state of Sonora, whose revolutionary generals dominated Mexican politics in the 1920s, Cárdenas was hand-picked by Plutarco Elías Calles, Sonoran general and former president of Mexico, as a presidential candidate and won in the 1934 general election. After founding the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in the wake of the assassination of president-elect Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles had unofficially remained in power during the Maximato (1928–1934) and expected to maintain that role when Cárdenas took office. Cárdenas, however, out-maneuvered him politically and forced Calles into exile. He established the structure of the National Revolutionary Party, eventually renamed the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM), on the sectoral representation of peasant leagues, labor union confederations, and the Mexican Army. Cárdenas's incorporation of the army into the party structure was a deliberate move to diminish the power of the military and prevent their intervention in politics through coups d'état. A left-wing economic nationalist, Cárdenas led the expropriation of the Mexican oil industry and the creation of the state-owned oil company Pemex in 1938. He implemented large-scale land reform programs in Mexico, redistributing large estates to smallholders in lands termed ejidos. He created the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) and El Colegio de México (Colmex). His foreign policy supported and gave asylum to Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. An achievement of Cárdenas was his complete surrender of power in December 1940 to his successor, Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was a political moderate without a distinguished military record. Cárdenas has been praised as "the greatest constructive radical of the Mexican Revolution", for implementing its ideals, but has also been criticized as an "authoritarian populist". He was the first post-revolutionary Mexican president to serve for a sexenio, a practice that continues today. According to numerous opinion polls and analysts, Cárdenas is the most popular Mexican president of the 20th century.
Early life and career
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was born on 21 May 1895, one of eight children in a lower-middle-class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán, where his father (Dámaso Cárdenas Pineda) owned a billiard hall. His family was of prominent Purépecha ancestry. After the death of his father in 1911, from the age of 16, Cárdenas supported his family (including his mother and seven younger siblings). By the time he reached 18, he had worked as a tax collector, a printer's devil, and a jail keeper. Although he left school when he was eleven, he used every opportunity to educate himself and read widely throughout his life, especially works of history.
Military career
Cárdenas set his sights on becoming a teacher but was drawn into the military during the Mexican Revolution after Victoriano Huerta overthrew President Francisco Madero in February 1913, although Michoacán was far from the revolutionary action that had brought Madero to the Mexican presidency. After Huerta's coup and Madero's assassination, Cárdenas joined a group of Zapatistas, but Huerta's forces scattered the group, where Cárdenas had served as captain and paymaster. Given that revolutionary forces were voluntary organizations, his position of leadership points to his skills and his being a paymaster to the perception that he would be honest in financial matters. Both characteristics followed him through his subsequent career. He escaped the Federal forces in Michoacán and moved north, where he served initially with Álvaro Obregón, then Pancho Villa, and after 1915 when Villa was defeated by Obregón to Plutarco Elías Calles, who served Constitutionalist leader Venustiano Carranza. Although Cárdenas was from the southern state of Michoacán, his key experiences in the Revolution were with Constitutionalist northerners, whose faction won. In particular, he served under Calles, who tasked him with military operations against Yaqui Indians and against Zapatistas in Michoacán and Jalisco, during which time he rose to a field command as general. In 1920, after Carranza was overthrown by northern generals, Cárdenas was given the rank of brigadier general at the age of 25. Cárdenas was appointed provisional governor of his home state of Michoacán under the brief presidency of Adolfo de la Huerta.
Service under President Calles Cárdenas was a political protégé of Calles, but his ideological mentor was revolutionary General Francisco J. Múgica, a strongly anticlerical, secular socialist. President Calles appointed Cárdenas Chief of Military Operations in the Huasteca, an oil-producing region on the Gulf Coast. Cárdenas saw first-hand the operations of foreign oil companies. In the Huasteca, U.S. oil companies extracted oil, avoided taxes owed to the Mexican government, and treated the region as "conquered territory." Múgica also was posted to the Huasteca and he and Cárdenas became close. During their time in the Huasteca, Múgica told Cárdenas that "socialism [is] the appropriate doctrine for resolving conflicts in Mexico."
Governor of Michoacán, 1928–1932 Cárdenas was appointed governor of his home state of Michoacán in 1928, which was undergoing the political conflict between state and Church, known as the Cristero War. His ideological mentor Múgica had previously served as the state's governor and had attempted to counter the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico through laws. He mobilized groups to support his positions, creating "political shock troops," consisting of public school teachers and members of a disbanded agrarian league, forming the Confederación Revolucionaria Michoacana del Trabajo, under the slogan of "Union, Land, Work." The organization was funded by the state government, although not listed as an official expenditure. It became the single-most powerful organization representing both workers and peasants. Mobilizing worker and peasant support and controlling the organization to which they belonged became the model for Cárdenas when he became president.
Land reform As governor, Cárdenas also prioritized land reform at a time when President Calles was disillusioned by the program. He expropriated haciendas and created ejidos, collectively held, state-controlled landholdings. Ejiditarios, members of the ejido, worked individual plots of land but did not hold title to it as private property. Opposition to the program came from estate owners (hacendados), the clergy, and in some cases, tenant farmers, but Cárdenas continued land reform programs in his state. During his four years as governor, Cárdenas initiated a modest re-distribution of land at the state level, encouraged the growth of peasant and labor organizations, and improved education at a time when it was neglected by the federal government. Cárdenas ensured teachers were paid on time, personally inspected schools, and opened one hundred new rural schools. Due to his grassroots style of governing, Cárdenas made important policy decisions based on direct information received from the public rather than on the advice of his confidants.
Promotion of tourism, art, and indigenous culture
During his term as governor, Cárdenas sought to bring peace to the state, unite its population divided by the on-going Cristero War, and make Michoacán, especially the historic town of Pátzcuaro into a tourist destination. Once he was president of Mexico, he continued to devote government funding to the project. Cárdenas built a house in Pátzcuaro when he became governor of the state, naming it "La Quinta Eréndira," after the Purépecha princess, who has been identified as Mexico's first anticolonial heroine for her resistance to the Spanish conquest, and a contrasting figure to Malinche, Cortés's cultural translator. Eréndira became a popular historical figure under Cárdenas. At his estate, he commissioned murals for the house, which are now lost, but it is known from historical sources that they had indigenous themes, particularly the rise and fall of the Purépecha Empire at the time of the Spanish conquest. The murals and the texts "appropriate national historical narratives in order to supplant the national myths and locate Mexico's ideal foundations in Michoacán."
1934 presidential election
Calles tapped Cárdenas to be the party's president. Of the revolutionary generals, Cárdenas was considered "honest, able, anti-clerical, and politically astute," He had come from a poor and marginal state of Mexico, but had risen to political prominence by his military skills on the battlefield but importantly he had chosen the correct side of decisive splits since 1913. When he was chosen as the presidential candidate in 1934, no one expected him to be anything other than being loyal to Calles, the "Jefe Máximo", and power behind the presidency since 1929. As the PNR's candidate, Cárdenas's election was a foregone conclusion. It was politically impossible for his patron, Calles, to serve as president again, but he continued to dominate Mexico after his presidency (1924–28) through "puppet administrations" in a period known as the Maximato. After two of his hand-picked men held office, the PNR balked in 1932 at supporting his first choice, Manuel Pérez Treviño. Instead, they selected Cárdenas as the presidential candidate. Calles agreed, believing he could control Cárdenas as he had controlled his predecessors. Not only had Cárdenas been associated with Calles for two decades, but he had prospered politically with Calles' patronage. Cárdenas resigned as secretary of war and the navy on May 15, 1933, and he accepted the PNR's nomination on June 5.
Six-Year Plan and presidential campaign Cárdenas ran on the Six Year Plan for social and political reform that the party drafted under Calles's direction. Such a multiyear program was patterned after the just-completed Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union. The Six-Year Plan (to span the presidential term 1934–40) was a patchwork of proposals from a variety of participants, but the driving force behind it was Calles, who had given a speech in May 1933, saying that the "Mexican Revolution had failed in most of its important objectives," and that a plan needed to implement its objectives. Interim President Abelardo L. Rodríguez did not get his cabinet's approval for the plan in 1933 so Calles's next move was to present it in draft form to the party convention. "Rather than a blueprint, the Six-Year Plan was a sales prospectus," and a "hopeless jumble" filled with compromises and contradictions, as well as utopian aspirations. But the direction of the plan was toward renewed reform. The plan called for
destruction of the hacienda economy and creation of a collective system of ejidos (common lands) under government control; modern secular schools and eradication of the influence of the Catholic Church; and workers' cooperatives to oppose the excesses of industrial capitalism. Assured of the backing of the powerful Calles and a presidential victory, Cárdenas took the opportunity to actively campaign in many parts of Mexico rather than remaining in Mexico City. His 25,000-kilometer campaign accomplished several things, including making direct contact with regions and constituents who had never seen a presidential candidate before and thus building Cárdenas a personal power base. The campaign also allowed him to refine and articulate for popular consumption what he considered the important elements of the Six Year Plan. On the campaign trail, he acted more like someone already in office than a candidate, settling disputes between groups. He reached out to Mexican workers, as well as peasants, to whom he promised land reform. Cárdenas promised indigenous peoples schools and educational opportunities, and urged them to join with workers against exploitative practices. As expected, Cárdenas won handily, officially winning over 98 percent of the vote, or 2,268,507 votes.
Presidency (1934–1940)
Presidential style
Cárdenas was inaugurated on December 1, 1934. His first action after taking office was to have his presidential salary cut in half. He became the first occupant of the official presidential residence of Los Pinos, seized from the Martínez del Río family. He had the previous residence, the ostentatious Chapultepec Castle, turned into the National Museum of History. In a move that struck at the financial interests of his patron Calles's cronies, Cárdenas closed down their gambling casinos and brothels, where "prominent Callistas had invested their profits from bribery and industrial activities." Cárdenas did not use armored cars or bodyguards to protect himself. In the presidential campaign of 1934, he traveled through much of the rural areas by auto and horseback, accompanied only by Rafael M. Pedrajo, a chauffeur and an aide-de-camp. His fearlessness generated widespread respect for Cárdenas, who had demonstrated his bravery and leadership as a revolutionary general.
Cabinet Cárdenas's cabinet when he was first in office included Calles family members, his oldest son Rodolfo at the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works (1934–1935); Aarón Sáenz Garza, the brother-in-law of Calles's second son, Plutarco Jr. ("Aco"), was appointed the administrator for Mexico City (1934–1935), a cabinet-level position. Others with loyalty to Calles were radical Tomás Garrido Canabal at the Secretariat of Agriculture and Development (1934–1935); Marxist Narciso Bassols held the post of Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (1934–1935); Emilio Portes Gil, who had been interim president of Mexico following the assassination of Obregón but not chosen as the PNR presidential candidate in 1929, held the position of Foreign Secretary (1934–1935). Cárdenas chose his comrade-in-arms and mentor General Francisco José Múgica as Secretary of the National Economy (1934–1935). As Cárdenas began to chart his course and outflank Calles politically, he replaced Calles loyalists in 1935 with his own men.
Cárdenas and the military
As a revolutionary general, Cárdenas followed in the tradition of his immediate predecessors in the presidency who had standing as military leaders but sought to curb the power of the military. Obregón and Calles sought to downsize and professionalize the Mexican military and make it subordinate to the civilian government. Cárdenas's election had not triggered revolts by disgruntled military men with ambitions to the presidency, as had happened in 1923, 1928, and 1929. Much of the military remained loyal to Calles, but Cárdenas had supporters among the army leadership as well. Cárdenas sought to serve as president in his own right, not be a puppet of Calles, and to do that he needed to broaden his base of support. Cárdenas sought to arm the peasantry as a counterpoise to the army, a move that disturbed the more conservative generals. Cárdenas cultivated the loyalty of the junior officer corps, providing better housing, pensions, and schooling for their children.
Cárdenas and the Catholic Church Cárdenas repealed the Calles Law soon after he became president in 1934. Cárdenas earned respect from Pope Pius XI and had a close friendship with Mexican Archbishop Luis María Martínez, a major figure in Mexico's Catholic Church who successfully persuaded Mexicans to obey the government's laws peacefully. However, he also implemented educational reforms, particularly socialist education and the elimination of religious schooling. Nevertheless, the Cárdenas administration bridged a gap between church and state, developed a working and friendly relationship with the church, and helped subdue the bitter animosity between Catholics and leftists that had lingered since the Mexican Revolution, with the Holy See eventually supporting Cárdenas in comparison to condemning the militant atheism of Calles. The attempts to make peace with the Catholic Church came in spite of the fact that Cardenas himself was an atheist who even once reportedly said "Man should not put his hope in the supernatural. Every moment spent on one's knees is a moment stolen from humanity."
Land reform and the peasantry
During Cárdenas' presidency, the government enacted land reform that was "sweeping, rapid, and, in some respects, innovative". He redistributed large commercial haciendas, some 180,000 km2 of land to peasants. With the powers of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, he created agrarian collectives, or ejidos, which in early twentieth-century Mexico were an atypical form of landholding. Two high-profile regions of expropriation for Cárdenas's agrarian reform were in the productive cotton-growing region in northern Mexico, known as La Laguna, and in Yucatán, where the economy was dominated by henequen production. Other areas that saw significant land reform were Baja California and Sonora in northern Mexico, his home state of Michoacán and Chiapas in southern Mexico.
In 1937, Cárdenas invited Andrés Molina Enríquez, intellectual father of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, to accompany him to Yucatán to implement the land reform, even though Molina Enríquez was not a big supporter of the collective ejido system. Although he could not go due to ill health, he defended Cárdenas's action against Luis Cabrera, who argued that the Ejidal Bank that Cárdenas established when he embarked on his sweeping redistribution of land was, in fact, making the Mexican state the new hacienda owner. For Molina Enríquez, the Yucatecan henequen plantations were an "evil legacy" and "hellholes" for the Maya. As a lifelong supporter of land reform, Molina Enríquez's support of Cárdenas's "glorious crusade" was important. Cárdenas knew that peasant support was important and as a presidential candidate in 1933, he reached out to an autonomous peasant organization, the Liga Nacional Campesina (National Peasant League) and promised to integrate it into the party structure. The Liga split over this question, but one element was integrated into the Partido Nacional Revolucionario. Cárdenas expanded the peasant league's base in 1938 into the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC). Cárdenas "believed that an organized peasantry would represent a political force capable of confronting the established landholding elite, as well as providing a critical voting block for the new Mexican state." Scholars differ as to Cárdenas's intent for the CNC, with some viewing it as an autonomous organization that would advocate for peasants regarding land tenure, rural projects, and peasant political interests, while others see the CNC as in patron-client relationship with the state, restricting its autonomy. The CNC was created with the idea of "peasant unification" and was controlled by the government. Peasants' rights were acknowledged, but peasants were to be responsible allies of the political regime. The radical Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) and the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) sought to organize peasants, but Cárdenas asserted the government's right to do that since it was in charge of land reform and warned that their attempting to organize the peasantry would sow dissension. Cárdenas further strengthened the government's role by creating rural militias or reserves, which armed some 60,000 peasants by 1940, which were under the control of the army. The armed peasantry helped promote political stability against regional strongmen (caudillos). They could ensure that government land reform was accomplished. Peasant reserves could protect recipients of reform against estate owners and break rural strikes that threatened government control. Agrarian reform took place in a patchwork fashion with uneven results. Over years, many regions had experienced peasant mobilization in the face of repression and "low intensity agrarian warfare." The peasant movement in Morelos had mobilized before the Mexican Revolution and had success under Emiliano Zapata's leadership extinguished the hacienda system in that state. In Cárdenas's agrarian reform, with the revolutionary regime consolidated and agrarian problems still unresolved, the president courted mobilized agraristas, who now found the state attentive to their issue. Land reform, with some exceptions such as in Yucatán, took place in areas of previous mobilization. Peasants themselves pushed for agrarian reform and to the extent it was accomplished, they were integral agents not merely the recipients of top-down state largesse. However, the peasantry was under the control of the national government with no outlet for independent organization or the formation of alliances with Mexican urban workers.
Labor
The other key sector of reform was industrial labor. Article 123 of the 1917 Constitution had empowered workers in an unprecedented way, guaranteeing human rights such as the minimum wage, an eight-hour workday and the right to strike and form trade unions, but in a more comprehensive fashion, Article 123 signaled that the Mexican state was firmly on the side of workers. A labor organization already existed when Cárdenas took office, the CROM union of Luis Morones. Morones was forced out of his cabinet post in Calles's government and the CROM declined in power and influence, with major defections of Mexico City unions, one of which was led by socialist Vicente Lombardo Toledano. Cárdenas promoted Toledano's "purified" Confederation of Mexican Workers, which evolved into the Mexican Confederation of Workers or CTM. The CTM's alliance with Cárdenas was tactical and conditional, seeing their interests being forwarded by Cárdenas, but not controlled by him. As with the agrarian sector with mobilized peasants, mobilized and organized workers had long agitated and fought for their interests. Article 123 of the Constitution was a tangible result of their participation in the Mexican Revolution on the Constitutionalist side. In fact, workers organized by the Casa del Obrero Mundial, a radical labor organization, fought in the Red Battalions against the peasant revolutionaries led by Emiliano Zapata. Lombardo Toledano and the CTM supported Cárdenas's exile of Calles and in the same stroke Cárdenas also exiled CROM's discredited leader, Luis Napoleón Morones. Cárdenas nationalized the railway system creating the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México in 1938 and put under a "workers' administration." His most sweeping nationalization was that of the petroleum industry in 1938. Various measures affecting labor were also introduced under Cárdenas. A decree was issued "giving binding force throughout the Republic to a collective agreement which establishes a maximum working week of 48 hours for persons employed in sugar-cane plantations, sugar factories (including by-products), and all similar undertakings." In addition, the Factory Inspection Service was instructed by the Federal authorities "to make arrangements to secure regular and effective supervision of working hours and to prevent infringements of the 8-hour day." Under an Act of 20 February 1936 that concerned the payment of wages for the weekly rest day, the State authorities "are free to allow for the special circumstances and needs of each locality when promulgating administrative regulations." An enquiry made by the Department of Labour into silicosis in mines and byssinosis in the cotton industry "led to the adoption of measures to ensure notification and compensation of these diseases." Regulations dealing with general industrial hygiene were issued on the 6th of June 1936. Dust-exhaust apparatus and respirators "were made compulsory for factories using certain raw materials (wool, padding, etc.), and the Federal Department of Public Health issued regulations for the protection of the health of workers in the woollen industry." The Industrial Hygiene Regulations of 6 June 1936 "make it compulsory for factories to establish a medical service." Regulations for the inspection of boilers were laid down on 30 August 1936, while regulations of 25 June 1936 "concerning industrial hygiene provide that the Department of Health must determine the cases in which industrial undertakings are to establish crêches and day nurseries for the children of their workers." The Government also undertook to give effect to Article 123 of the Constitution, which provides "that all agricultural, industrial and mining undertakings shall supply comfortable and healthy living accommodation for their employees." Under an Act of 27 September 1938, which was promulgated on 5 December 1938, "laying down the Federal Civil Servants' Statute, hours of work and other conditions of employment are regulated for all Federal civil servants other than those employed in a confidential capacity." On 21 March 1939, regulations for a maritime inspection service were promulgated.
Education
During the Calles Maximato, Mexican education policies were directed at curtailing the cultural influence of the Catholic Church by introducing sex education and leftist ideology via socialist education, and generally aiming to create a national civic culture. Cárdenas as a presidential candidate, under the patronage of fierce anticlerical Calles, was in favor of such policies. The opposition to socialist education by the Catholic Church as an institution and rural Catholics in such strongholds as Michoacán, Jalisco, and Durango saw the revival of armed peasant opposition, sometimes known as the Second Cristiada. The extent of the opposition was significant and Cárdenas chose to step back from implementing the radical educational policies, particularly as he became engaged with undermining Calles's power. Cárdenas gained support from the Catholic Church when he distanced himself from anticlerical policies. More funds were also allocated to education during the course of the Cárdenas presidency. An important addition to higher education in Mexico was when Cárdenas established the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), a technical university in Mexico City, in the wake of the 1938 oil expropriation to train engineers and scientists. In 1937 a National Polytechnic Institute was established; offering (as Cárdenas noted in a 1940 message) "opportunities for young people to develop special skills and to prepare themselves for technical and professional careers." A basic Act on Education, which contained detailed provisions on technical and professional training and education, was promulgated on 30 December 1939.
Health and Welfare A number of measures aimed at improving health and welfare were carried out under the Cárdenas administration. During the six years of Cárdenas's presidency, water supply systems had been constructed in 337 towns, while health stations and hospitals were established. In 1936, social medicine and rural hygiene services were set up. A nation-wide welfare program was also adopted by the government that included, as Cardenas noted in a 1940 message, "medical assistance, aid to mothers and children, and general social therapy directed toward the education and rehabilitation of socially and economically weak and dependent persons and their eventual re-establishment as useful members of society." In 1937 the Compania Exportadora e Importadora Mexicana was set up with the aim of providing markets for producers and stabilizing commodity prices for urban workers. The following year the Comite Regulador del Mercado de Subsistencias (CRMS) was set up (as noted by one study) "to better combat shortages, higher prices, and labor demands for higher wages." By 1939, CRMS had opened up retail shops which sold staples such as beans, rice and sugar at 50-75% below market rates.
Indigenismo
Cárdenas created the new cabinet-level Department of Indigenous Affairs (Departamento de Asuntos Indígenas) in 1936, with Graciano Sánchez, an agrarista leader in charge. After a controversy at the DAI, Sánchez was replaced by a scholar, Prof. Luis Chávez Orozco. Cárdenas was influenced by an advocate of indigenismo, Moisés Sáenz, who earned a doctorate in education from Columbia University and had held a position in the Calles administration in the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP). Although initially an assimilationist for Mexico's indigenous, he shifted his perspective after a period of residence in a Purépecha village, which he published as Carapan: Bosquejo de una experiencia. He came to see indigenous culture as having value. Sáenz advocated for educational and economic reforms that would better the indigenous, and this became the aim of the department Cárdenas created. The official 1940 government report on the Cárdenas administration states that "the indigenous problem is one of the most serious that the revolutionary government has had to confront." The aim of the department was to study fundamental problems concerning Mexico's indigenous, particularly economic and social conditions, and then propose measures to the executive power for coordinated action to promote and manage measures considered to be in the interests of centers of indigenous populations. Most indigenous people were found in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Yucatán, according to the 1930 national census. In 1936 and 1937, the department had approximately 100 employees and a budget of $750,000 pesos, but as with other aspects of the Cárdenas regime, 1938 marked a significant increase personnel and budget; 350 employees in 1938 and a budget of $2.77 million pesos and in 1939, the high point in the department's budget, there were 850 employees with a budget of $3.75 million pesos. In 1940, the budget remained robust at $3 million pesos, with 650 employees. The function of the department was primarily economic and educational. Specifically it was tasked with defending indigenous villages and communities, holders of ejidos (ejidatarios) and indigenous citizens from persecution and abuse that could be committed by any type of authority. It defended ejido officials (comisariados ejidales) and agricultural cooperatives. The goals that the department worked toward were primarily economic and education, with cultural actions second. Social measures and public health/sanitation were less important in terms of action for this department. The department promoted a series of national indigenous congresses, bringing together different indigenous groups to meet as indigenous and discuss common issues. The government's aim in doing this was to have them move in concert toward the "integral liberation" (liberación integral), with their rights respected by the primary goal was to incorporate indigenous into the larger, national population on an equal basis. Initially in 1936 and 1937, there was one annual conference. The first one drew approximately 300 pueblos, while the second only 75. In 1938, there were two conferences with 950 pueblos represented. The last two years of the Cárdenas sexenio there were two congresses each year, but sparser attendance at around 200 pueblos each. The government attempted to engage the active participation of the indigenous pueblos, seeing that such engagement was the key to success, but the fall-off in the last two years indicates decreased mobilization. The department published 12 edited books with a total publication run of 350 as well as 170 tape recorded materials in indigenous languages. In February 1940, the department established a separate medical/sanitary section with 4 clinics in Chihuahua and one in Sonora, but the largest number were in central in southern Mexico. In 1940, the first Interamerican Indigenista Congress met in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, with Cárdenas giving a plenary address to the participants.
Women's suffrage Cárdenas had pushed for women's suffrage in Mexico, responding to the pressure from women activists and from the political climate that emphasized equality of citizens. Mexico was not alone in Latin America in not enfranchising women, but in 1932, both Brazil and Uruguay had extended suffrage to women, and Ecuador had also done so. Women had made a significant contribution to the Mexican Revolution, but had not made gains in the postrevolutionary phase. Women who were members of the National Peasants Confederation (Confederación Nacional Campesina) or the Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos) were, by virtue of their membership umbrella organizations, also members of Cárdenas's reorganized party, the Party of the Mexican Revolution or PRM, done in 1938. In practice, however, women were marginalized from power. Women could not stand for national or local governmental elections or vote. The Constitution of 1917 did not explicitly address women's rights and so to enfranchise women required a constitutional amendment. The amendment itself was simple and brief, specifying that "mexicanos" referred to both women and men. Many PNR congressmen and senators gave supportive speeches for the amendment, but there was opposition. Cárdenas's impending reorganization of the party, which took place in 1938, was a factor in changing some opponents into supporters. In the end, it passed unanimously and was sent to the states to ratify it. Despite the speeches and the ratifications, opponents used a loophole to block the amendment's implementation by refusing to publish notice of the change in the Diario official. Skeptics of women's suffrage were suspicious that conservative Catholic women would take instructions on voting from priests and so undermine the progressive gains of the Revolution. Conservative Catholic women had mobilized during the church-state conflict of the late 1920s, the Cristero Rebellion, giving material aid to Cristero armies, and even forming a secret society, Feminine Brigades of St. Joan of Arc. The concern about Mexican women taking advice from priests on voting had some foundation in the example of the leftist Spanish Republic of the 1930s. Many Spanish women indeed supported the position of the Catholic Church which was opposed to the republic's anticlerical policies. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was for Mexico a cautionary tale, the failure of a leftist regime after a military coup. Cárdenas was unable to overcome opposition to women's suffrage although he personally was committed to the cause. Women did not get the vote in Mexico until 1953, when the Mexican government was pursuing economic policies friendlier to business and there was a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church in Mexico.
Legalization of drugs During the last years of his mandate, Cárdenas impulsed groundbreaking drug policy reforms in the country, assisted by Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra who was head of the Drugs authority in the Department of Public Health (departamento de salubridad pública). Salazar's scientific investigations and writings served as the intellectual foundation for Lázaro Cárdenas' Reglamento Federal de Toxicomanías (English: Federal Regulation on Drug Addictions), signed into law on 5 January 1940. The law decriminalized sales and purchases of small quantities of drugs, eliminating former punishments for drug offenses. In addition, drug users jailed for small criminal drug offenses were released. The law also in effect created a legal way of access to psychoactive drugs for non-medical purposes, and attempted to guarantee medical attention to people addicted to drugs by authorizing medical professionals to prescribe and administer narcotic drugs. The government allocated funds to create a special budget for clinics or dispensaries to open up in order to effectively treat patients by administering controlled doses of low-cost, safe, quality drugs. Patients were required to officially register with clinics in order to receive treatment. Around six clinics were set up around Mexico City. Around 200 people—as many as 1,000, according to some estimates—attended the clinics daily. The state-controlled monopoly on drugs made it so they could provide high quality drugs at a low cost, and much lower and safer than what was sold on the streets of Mexico City at the time. The law was in effect for about 5 months when, on July 3, 1940, the Mexican government repealed the Reglamento in a decree published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación. The formal government explanation attributed this decision to a shortage of resources and the inability to purchase drugs from Europe due to World War II. Not mentioned in the official declaration were the increasing economic and political pressures from the U.S. to repeal the law.
Partido de la Revolución Mexicana
The Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM) came into being on March 30, 1938, after the party founded in 1929 by Calles, the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), was dissolved. Cárdenas's PRM was reorganized again in 1946 as the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Calles founded the PNR in the wake of President-elect Obregón's assassination in order to create some way for revolutionary leaders to maintain order and power. Calles could not be re-elected as president, but did hold power through the newly created party. Often called the "official party", it "was created as a cartel to control localized political machines and interests." When Cárdenas ran as the candidate of the PNR in 1934, Calles had expected to continue to be the real power in Mexico. Cárdenas might have been one of the short-term, powerless presidents of the years 1929–1934, but instead he built a large and mobilized base of support of industrial workers and peasants and forced Calles into exile in 1935. Cárdenas further consolidated power by dissolving the PNR and creating a new party with a completely different kind of organization. Although Congress was dominated by Callistas early in his term, Cárdenas persuaded congressmen to his side, “to the point that he commanded a majority in the Chamber.” As noted by one study, “when Calles began to criticize agrarian and labor agitation and pressure the government to moderate its policies in mid-1935, Cardenas purged his cabinet of Calles’s most loyal supporters. This action demonstrated that the power of the Jefe Máximo was more apparent than real. In its wake, Cardenistas took over the PNR, Congress, and the governments of 14 states.” As noted by another study, “Calles left the country and the Cardenista blocs in the Union Congress became the majority.” The PRM was organized in four sectors, industrial labor, peasants, a middle class sector (composed largely of government workers), and the military. This organization was a resurrection of corporatism, essentially organization by estates or interest groups. Each sector of the party had a parallel organization, so that the labor sector was composed of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the peasant sector by the National Confederation of Campesinos, (CNC); and the middle class sector by the Federation of Unions of Workers in Service to the State (FSTSE), created in 1938. The old Federal Army had been destroyed in the Revolution and the post-revolutionary military had increasingly been transformed from a collection of veteran revolutionary fighters