Calculating Pragmatism:The High Politics of the Banco Ejidal in Twentieth-century Mexico

2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-363
Author(s):  
Nicole Mottier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Agricultural Growth ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
High Politics ◽  
The Revolution

The battles that peasants waged during the Mexican Revolution translated into a series of agrarian and agricultural institutions, and one of these was the Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal, created in 1926. Histories deeply engrained in both the popular imagination of Mexico and scholarly historiography have offered a generic classic narrative of ejidal credit, beginning with Lázaro Cárdenas. He and his cabinet sought to transform theejidointo the engine of agricultural growth for the nation and carried out a sweeping and (in qualified ways) successful land reform, thereby bringing the revolution to the fullest fruition many Mexicans would ever know. It is assumed that ejidal credit peaked during Cárdenas's administration in two major ways: first, it was in this period that ejidal credit societies received the most loans from the Banco Nacional del Crédito Ejidal, and second, it was during the same period that the bank clearly and unanimously embraced social reform goals over orthodox banking goals.

Emiliano Zapata and Revolutionary Mexico, 1910–1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hart
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Judicial Reform ◽  
Agricultural Producers ◽  
Rural Workers ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Land Redistribution ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The Revolution

Emiliano Zapata led the Liberating Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution. Zapata’s movement began with a demand for land reform, and his beliefs are most often captured by reference to the Plan de Ayala, which he promulgated in 1911. It was largely because of the Zapatistas (Zapata and his adherents) that land reform was written into the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Later, especially under President Lázaro Cárdenas, (1934–1940), the Mexican government carried out major land redistribution, which helped earn the post-revolutionary state legitimacy in the countryside. Over the course of nearly a decade fighting in the revolution, Zapata’s vision for remaking Mexico extended far beyond the Plan de Ayala and land reform to include judicial reform, decentralization of power, political democracy, the redistribution of wealth, and the promotion of the interests of rural workers and small agricultural producers while protecting Mexican sovereignty against powerful foreign interests. Zapata, however, led the most poorly armed of the main factions in the revolution and was unable to realize his goals. His enemies received large amounts of foreign military supplies, while he received no assistance from abroad. The inability of his poorly equipped volunteer army, mostly peasants and hacienda workers, to carry out large pitched battles dictated that they had to fight a grueling guerilla war. Zapata was unable to win on the battlefield, but was never totally defeated. He was assassinated in 1919. Although his larger vision for the future of Mexico did not prevail, his fight for land reform helped shape modern Mexico.

Ben Fallaw,Cárdenas Compromised:The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán. London: Duke University Press, 2001. 222 pp.

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 211-213
Author(s):  
Wil G. Pansters
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
International Capital ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Duke University ◽  
Corporatist State ◽  
National Bourgeoisie ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas

The presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), one of the leading figures of Latin American populism of the first half of the twentieth century, has long been surrounded by myth and politicized interpretations. To a certain extent this is understandable: under Cárdenas's leadership major and spectacular reforms were carried out that had their roots in claims originally formulated during and in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). Moreover, these reforms have had a lasting impact on Mexico's political and socioeconomic development. In state-sanctioned historia oficial the figure of “grandfather” Cárdenas long reached mythical proportions: he carried out huge projects of land reform and thus finally responded to the demands of poor peasants and Indians, stood up against international capital by nationalizing the oil industry, rebuffed the conservative factions of the national bourgeoisie and laid the foundations for the corporatist state and party, that was to rule Mexico for the remaining part of the century, and thus gave institutional voice to the country's working classes. This image has also been influential in scholarly writings, particularly in those that studied cardenismo as a national phenomenon. Recent years, however, have seen important changes. Nationalist populism is drastically reevaluated in the dominant discourse of neoliberal modernity, and scholars have started to break down the phenomenon, thereby trying to overcome politicized interpretations.

scholarly journals Cárdenas and the Caste War that Wasn’t: State Power and Indigenismo in Post-Revolutionary Yucatán

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben W. Fallaw
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Ethnic Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural Poor ◽  
Subsequent Period ◽  
National Reconstruction ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Caste War ◽  
The Revolution

The Caste War that devastated Yucatán in the middle of the nineteenth century cast a long shadow across ethnic relations and politics in the state decades after its effective end. During the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent period of national reconstruction, revolutionary politicians invoked the Caste War as a precursor to the Revolution and as justification for post-Revolutionary projects, in particular indigenismo. The state’s indigenist policy advocated, in the words of Alan Knight, the “emancipation and integration of Mexico’s exploited Indian groups.” To this end, it offered indigenous people education, legal support, even land; however, these “modernizing” policies also destroyed or appropriated much of their culture and subordinated them to the state. The legacy of the Caste War shaped such indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to (at least) the 1930s, but its influence was strongest during Cardenas’ visit to Yucatán in August of 1937. The president not only reinterpreted the Caste War to justify land reform and a broad indigenist project; he attempted to mobilize the Yucatecan peasantry along class and ethnic lines and threatened recalcitrant landlords with another caste war should they oppose him. Once armed, however, peasant soldiers turned their rifles not against the landowners but against each other. This essays explores how the Caste War’s legacy shaped the development and deployment of indigenist projects in Yucatán from the Revolution to the late 1930s, focusing on Cárdenas’ aborted mobilization. Along the way, it will consider the impact and efficacy of state-sponsored indigenismo. Above all, it seeks to understand why state efforts to champion the cause of the Maya failed to unify the rural poor of Yucatán under the banner of Cardenismo.

The Crisis of Cardenismo

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert L. Michaels
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Urban Workers ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The Church

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.

Confrontation and Reconciliation: Mexicans and Spaniards During the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920

1984 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

When King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain completed a 1978 tour of Mexico, the occasion was naturally marked by sentimental rhetoric. President José Lóopez Portillo launched an official reconciliation when he visited Madrid the year before. Underlying the whole exercise, however, was a deep psychological resistance on the part of most Mexicans. The King attempted to emphasize to Mexicans the Spanish aspect of their heritage, but the history of Mexican-Spanish relations during the Revolution underlines the history of ethnic hostility between both groups during the first decades of the twentieth century. As in 1917, the Mexican government in 1978 decided that economic gains far outweighed whipping up popular resentment against the Spaniards.

scholarly journals Prison Letters of Ricardo Flores Magon to Lilly Sarnoff

1977 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-422
Author(s):  
Paul Avrich
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Baja California ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Porfirio Diaz ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
The One ◽  
Partido Liberal Mexicano ◽  
The Revolution

The career of Ricardo Flores Magón, the foremost Mexican anarchist of the twentieth century, involves a curious paradox. On the one hand, he must be counted among the leading inspirers and martyrs of the Mexican Revolution. His movement, embodied in the Partido Liberal Mexicano, set in motion the forces that, in May 1911, drove Porfirio Díaz into exile; and his journal, Regeneración, which in the early stages of the Revolution reached a circulation of nearly 30,000, played an important part in rousing Mexican laborers, rural as well as urban, against the Díaz dictatorship and in pushing the Revolution in a more egalitarian direction than it might otherwise have taken. Under the banner of “Land and Liberty”, the Magonista revolt of 1911 in Baja California established short-lived revolutionary communes at Mexicali and Tijuana, having for their theoretical basis Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, a work which Flores Magón regarded as a kind of anarchist bible and which his followers distributed in thousands of copies. Today the memory of Flores Magón is honored throughout Mexico. His remains rest in the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in Mexico City. In all parts of the country streets and squares bear his name, and Mexicans pay him homage as a great “precursor” of their Revolution, which was one of the major social upheavals of the twentieth century.

Saving the Nation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban Elite ◽  
Justice And Mercy

This book is a history of the Chinese Protestant elite and their contribution to building a new China in the years from 1922 to 1952. While a small percentage of China’s overall population, China’s Protestants constituted a large and influential segment of the urban elite. They exercised that influence through their churches, hospitals, and schools, especially the universities, and also through institutions such as the YMCA and the YWCA, whose membership was drawn from the modern sectors of urban life. These Protestant elites believed that they could best contribute to the building of a new China through their message of social Christianity, believing that Christianity could help make Chinese society strong, modern, and prosperous, but also characterized by justice and mercy. More than preaching a message, the Protestant elite also played a critical social role, through their institutions, broadening the appeal and impact of social movements, and imparting to them a greater sense of legitimacy. This history begins with the elite’s participation in social reform campaigns in the early twentieth century, continues with their efforts in resisting imperialism, and ends with their support for the Communist-led social revolution.

Punarvivaham vs. Pativratyam: Pulugurta Lakshmi Narasamamba and the Widow Remarriage Question in Colonial Andhra

2021 ◽  
pp. 025764302110017
Author(s):  
Shaik Mahaboob Basha
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Child Marriage ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women's Journals

The question of widow remarriage, which occupied an important place in the social reform movement, was hotly debated in colonial Andhra. Women joined the debate in the early twentieth century. There was a conservative section of women, which bitterly opposed the widow remarriage movement and attacked the social reformers, both women and men. Pulugruta Lakshmi Narasamamba led this group of women. Lakshmi Narasamamba treated widow remarriage (punarvivaham) with contempt and termed it as an affront to the fidelity (pativratyam) of Hindu women. According to her, widow remarriage was equal to ‘prostitution’, and the widows who married again could not be granted the status of kulanganas (respectable or chaste women). Lakshmi Narasamamba’s stand on the question of widow remarriage led to the emergence of a fiery and protracted controversy among women which eventually led to the division of the most famous women’s organization, the Shri Vidyarthini Samajamu. She opposed not only widow remarriage but also post-puberty marriage and campaigned in favour of child marriage. This article describes the whole debate on the widow remarriage question that took place among women. It is based on the primary sources, especially the woefully neglected women’s journals in the Telugu language.

Social Work and Social Welfare: The Organization of Philanthropic Resources in Britain, 1900–1914

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The State ◽  
Charity Organization ◽  
Transitional Era

Late Victorian and Edwardian social reform has been studied in recent years in order to clarify that important transitional era when new state resources were being called upon to help redress the most glaring abuses which comprised the condition-of-England question. Most of these studies have emphasized the politics of social policy and have also subsumed the tangled and competitive world of philanthropy. But philanthropists were prominent in the politics and practice of social welfare. In his study of Edwardian social policy, Bentley Gilbert distinguishes three organizations as characteristic of “scientific social reform”: settlements (inspired by Canon Samuel Barnett), the Fabians, and the Charity Organization Society. His analysis of each concluded that “professionally-minded social work,” as represented by the C.O.S., least typified the transition from old to new attitudes about social policy. David Owen's examination of English philanthropy supports Gilbert's conclusions concerning the C.O.S., and less detailed surveys of social policy also cite that agency as representative of a philosophic individualism which rejected the policies necessary for reform. All agree that the charitable community called attention to many defects in the British social system, but they leave readers with the impression that it generally opposed state sponsored remedies for those ills.It is the concern of this essay to show that the “professionally-minded” world of Edwardian philanthropy was, like the state, developing new agencies and reorganizing its resources to help meet the massive and diverse welfare needs of the twentieth century.

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