Background
Lazaro Cardenas was born on on May 21, 1895 in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán.
Lazaro Cardenas was born on on May 21, 1895 in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán.
He left school at the age of 14 when his father died.
For a time he operated a small print shop, but he joined the revolutionary army in 1913. He rose to captain within a year and became a general in 1920. During the next decade he served first as military commander of the city of Tampico, then as governor of his native state of Michoacan, and finally as president of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) - the official party of the Mexican revolution and the overwhelmingly dominant party of the nation. Cardenas, who had been one of the organizers of the PNR in 1929, was Mexico's minister of the interior in 1931 and minister of war and marine in 1933.
In 1934, as the PNR's candidate for president of Mexico, Cardenas tirelessly crisscrossed the country, traveling some 16,000 miles (26,000 km) to gather support for his six-year plan of agrarian, educational, and economic reform. As president from 1934 to 1940, Cardenas continued to tour Mexico while pushing forward a sweeping program that embodied the ideals and aims of the Mexican revolution. He nationalized and divided haciendas, distributing more than 40,000,000 acres (16,200,000 hectares) of land to peasants--twice the cumulative total since 1920. Appropriated land was divided into cooperative farms called ejidos, and in 1935 a National Bank of Ejidal Credit was established so that new landowners could borrow money for farm supplies and implements. Also under Cardenas, labor organizations were strengthened, rural and Indian education was enlarged, and the government constructed dams to provide irrigation water for the ejidos.
Ownership and management of the national railway system were transferred from the government to railroad workers in 1937. However, a sharp increase in the number of accidents, and declines in service and efficiency, forced the government to reestablish control in 1940. Cardenas's boldest reform was the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry, in March 1938. This action was a much-delayed implementation of Mexico's 1917 constitution, which declared all subsoil wealth to be the property of the Mexican people. The expropriation strained Mexico's relations with the United States and other nations, whose corporations lost extremely lucrative properties. Most industrialized nations refused to buy Mexican oil. Their boycott ended with the outbreak of World War II, and Mexico paid compensation for the expropriated oil properties.
On his retirement from the presidency, Cardenas aided his successor, Manuel Avila Comacho, in Mexico's World War II effort. In 1943 CárdenasCardenas became minister of national defense, and in 1945 he was made commander in chief of the Mexican army. As a private citizen during the postwar years, CárdenasCardenas remained active as a left-wing dissident in the government party, which was renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1946. Although not a doctrinaire Marxist, CárdenasCardenas sympathized with the goals of socialism. He was critical, however, of the Soviet system of government, and during his presidency he demonstrated his disapproval of Joseph Stalin's oppressive regime by granting asylum to the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
During the 1950's and 1960's Cardenas maintained his interest in national affairs. In 1961 he came out of retirement to serve on the commission of the Balsas River Basin, which oversaw the operation of one of Mexico's principal electrification and development agencies.
