México y Japón durante la guerra civil en España: el caso del Buque Florida Maru

Al estallar la guerra civil española, el gobierno de México, a cargo del presidente Lázaro Cárdenas, emprendió acciones humanitarias, así como apoyo directo e indirecto para el envío de armas y municiones para enfrentar a las fuerzas franquistas. En ese contexto se desarrolla el “incidente del Florida Maru”, un barco con bandera japonesa que transportaba un cargamento de equipo militar con destino al puerto de Manzanillo, hecho que produjo un complejo diferendo diplomático entre México y Japón que pudo atenderse a través del diálogo y la negociación. En ese sentido, el presente artículo busca a través de un estudio histórico-descriptivo identificar el contexto de las relaciones hispano-mexicanas en el marco de la guerra civil, para después enfocarse al caso del Florida Maru a través del análisis de los documentos consultados en el Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de México y del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Japón, los cuales permiten identificar dos hallazgos importantes: en primer lugar, la prioridad del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas para apoyar a la Segunda República en el suministro de armas usando todos los medios logísticos y diplomáticos disponibles ante las políticas de embargo por parte de Estados Unidos y otros países europeos; en segundo, el despliegue del diálogo y cabildeo como instrumentos para resolver con Japón las tensiones diplomáticas, las cuales se resolvieron sin comprometer los tradicionales nexos de amistad que ambos países habían cultivado desde el inicio formal de sus contactos políticos y diplomáticos a finales del siglo XIX.

Atmospheric Emissions in Ports Due to Maritime Traffic in Mexico

Atmospheric emissions from vessels at 38 Pacific and Gulf-Caribbean Mexican ports were determined for nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulates, carbon monoxide, non-methane volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide. The emissions have been estimated using a bottom-up methodology in the maneuver and hoteling phases, by vessel type, from 2005 to 2020. Maritime traffic in Mexico’s Pacific zone contributes approximately with 60% of the country’s total ship emissions, with the remaining 40% in Gulf-Caribbean ports. The highest atmospheric emissions were found at the Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas ports on the Pacific coast, as well as the Altamira and Veracruz ports on the Gulf-Caribbean coast. The contribution of the atmospheric emissions by vessel type at Pacific ports was Container 67%, Bulk Carrier 32%, Tanker 0.8%, and RoRo 0.4%. For Gulf-Caribbean ports it was Container 76%, Bulk Carrier 19%, Tanker 3%, and RoRo 2%. This study incorporates the International Maritime Organization implementations on reductions of sulfur content in marine fuel, from 4.5% mass by mass from 2005 to 2011, to 3.5% from 2012 to 2019, to 0.5% beginning in 2020. Overall, sulfur dioxide emissions were reduced by 89%.

The teaching of biological evolution in Mexican socialist textbooks in the 1930s

This manuscript presents the genesis and development of the so-called “Mexican socialist” school system of the 1930s, whose leading stakeholder was President Lázaro Cárdenas. At the beginning of the socialist project, Mexico underwent the most politicized and controversial education reform in its modern history. Much has been said about this ambitious project of social change. However, a thorough exam is still needed, especially on how socialist values were globalized and appropriated in the Mexican scenario regarding the new State project of basic education. In this sense we are interested in how science was portrayed in Natural Sciences textbooks, especially focusing in biological evolution.

Latinx Basketball

Research on Latinx athletes and their communities is a significant contribution to sports studies. Recent studies on sports in Latinx communities have highlighted regional teams, transnational relationships, race and ethnicity, and sociopolitical structures. Still, the need continues for more attention on Latinx sport identity and community. Although basketball originated in the United States, the sport played a significant political role in regions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. For example, in Mexico, President Lázaro Cárdenas (r. 1934–1940) introduced government reforms that included promoting sports; thus, in Oaxaca, Catholic missionaries used basketball as a socialization tool to strengthen relationships in rural communities (see Rios 2008 [cited under Society and Culture]). Rios 2019 (cited under Society and Culture) and Garcia 2014 (cited under History and Geography) are the primary texts dedicated to the history of basketball in Latin America and the importance of basketball to Latinx communities in the United States.

From Desamortization to Agrarian Reform in Mexico, 1856–1940

The first phase of the development of land tenure in Mexico, from the desamortization laws in 1856 to agrarian reform, was completed in 1940 by the Lázaro Cárdenas administration. While between 1856 and 1910 property reforms served to concentrate land and stimulate latifundio, from the violent Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917 until 1992 a policy of social justice was implemented that sought to give land to peasant families, thereby generating a better distribution of land, though without improving its productivity. This signifies that if postrevolutionary modernity assumed, echoing neo-institutionalism or old trends such as positivism or regeneracionismo, that land redistribution was a necessary condition to generate economic growth, in reality it was the social dimension and not the economic that gave character to Mexican agrarian reform between 1920 and 1992. As a backdrop to this, the analysis of literature and history shows a truncated and limited agrarian reform in which traditional figures such as the cacique persisted. The traditional and official vision of the agrarian reform is misguided, in which it is understood as a product of restitutive justice, the result of peasants regaining the lands from which they had been evicted due to the desamortization laws and the greed of landowners hungry for land who had annexed the land of the pueblos. To the contrary, agrarian reform is distributive, allocating land to peasants who requested it, while the hacienda was not the source of all the evils that gave rise to the revolution. Nor can the situation of the Mexican countryside be portrayed as the fight of the peones against the hacendados or caciques hungry for land. This erroneous vision of the Mexican countryside should be demystified, because it does not take into account that agrarian reform became the touchstone to give an agrarian nature to a very diversified Mexican Revolution and convert it into an instrument for the postrevolutionary governments to champion the peasant struggle in 20th-century Mexico, becoming the key to economic growth and social justice in the rural Mexican world.

On the way to the Soviet Mexico: the Comintern and the Communist Party of Mexico at the period of its illegal activities, 1929-1934

This article deals with the evolution and peculiarities of the policy of Mexican communists who were forced to operate underground after the beginning of the "left turn" in the late 1920s. During this period, the CPM actually abandoned its own interpretation of the problems of the revolution in its country, being satisfied with the policies and assessments of the Comintern apparatus. The author's attention is paid to both the party's course towards attempts to penetrate the army structures, as also to new forms of activity (after the collapse of the policy of broad alliances) in the labor movement, among the unemployed and peasant organizations; they were all aimed at achieving the goal of the seizure of power by the workers and peasants; in 1929-1934 the Communist Party of Mexico virtually excluded the anti-imperialist component from its sphere of activity. The crisis in the reformist sector of the labor movement contributed to the intensive development of an independent labor movement, the path to which the Mexican Communists tried to find, however, this activity was complicated by the presence of a number of serious competitors. During this period, the communists concentrated their efforts on working in the nation-wide branch trade unions, which created the groundwork for new growth. At the same time, the CPM did not understand neither the significance of the figure of the progressive politician Lazaro Cardenas, nor the consequences of the regrouping within the ruling elites, and with great difficulty renounced sectarian politics.

Estados Unidos frente a la promulgación y suspensión en México del Reglamento de Toxicomanías de 1940

Este artículo analiza el proceso de promulgación y suspensión en México del Reglamento de Toxicomanías de 1940, por el que se permitía, entre otras cosas, la puesta en marcha de un programa de sustitución de adicciones radical para su época. Aunque el Reglamento fue firmado por el presiente Lázaro Cárdenas en enero, en junio de 1940 fue suspendido de forma indefinida debido a presiones de diferentes instituciones del gobierno de Estados Unidos (ee.uu.). El artículo tiene dos objetivos. Por un lado, examinar el papel que desempeñaron diferentes actores e instituciones del gobierno de ee.uu. en la suspensión del referido Reglamento. Por otro, analizar la reacción tanto de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (sre) como del Departamento de Salubridad Pública (dsp) en defensa del mismo. Abrevando de fuentes primarias reunidas en México y en ee.uu., se reconstruyen los pormenores de la relación transgubernamental entre funcionarios mexicanos y estadounidenses entre abril de 1938 y julio de 1940, mes en el que se suspende el Reglamento.

Pátzcuaro da la bienvenida al turista. La obra de Lázaro Cárdenas al norte de la ciudad

En la década de 1930 el presidente de México Lázaro Cárdenas ordenó en la una serie de obras de mejoramiento urbano, infraestructura y equipamiento turístico al norte de la ciudad de Pátzcuaro con el fin de crear una entrada pintoresca para turistas en el principal acceso carretero y en los alrededores de la estación ferroviaria. Tales obras implicaron una radical transformación del paisaje y la creación de escenarios pueblerinos para satisfacer la imaginación del visitante. A partir de la revisión pormenorizada de los cambios efectuados en la zona norte de Pátzcuaro, que daba la bienvenida a los visitantes que llegaban en automóvil o en tren, se revela la importancia dada no solo al embellecimiento, sino también a la creación de un escenario rural o campestre que para el final de mandato presidencial de Cárdenas ten 1940 se habían concretado claramente.

Las ligas femeninas ante el alcoholismo y la salubridad en el México posrevolucionario, 1934-1946

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar cómo las ligas femeninas de distintos Estados de la República de México se dotaron de entidad jurídica y se constituyeron en sujeto político reivindicativo que, junto a la lucha por los derechos de las mujeres, reivindicó otro tipo de mejoras materiales como reducir las altas tasas de alcoholismo y mejorar las condiciones de salubridad en sus localidades. Concretamente se estudiarán aquellos grupos y asambleas impulsados por o vinculados al Frente Único Pro Derechos de la Mujer (1935-1940) y al Bloque Nacional de Mujeres Revolucionarias (1940-1946) durante los gobiernos de Lázaro Cárdenas y Manuel Ávila Camacho.

When divulgation reaches us

In 2018, Mexico held its presidential election; its results soon clearly indicated that the left-wing candidate, with a degree in political science and a fierce critic of the ruling political system, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, would become President. Following his triumph, many cultural organizations, unions and employees of the field jubilantly celebrated what they thought would mean a strengthening of cultural policies and a kind of return to the years of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río who put archeology, indigenism and culture at the heart of his government policies.