¹ ‘Corrido de Francisco Múgica’ in Armando de María y Campos, La revolución mexicana a traves de los corridos populares (México, D.F., 1962), pp. 227–30.Google Scholar

² The most recent person to raise the issue of the rejection of Múgica's candidacy in 1939 was the novelist Mondragón, Magdalena in his novel Cuando la revolución se cortó las alas (México, D.F., 1966).Google Scholar Also James and Edna Wilkie's oral history interviews with Cota, José Muñoz. Mexico City, 27 01 1964.Google Scholar

³ The long- and short-range economic benefits of Cárdenas's economic policies are clearly delineated in Vernon's, RaymondThe Dilemma of Mexico's Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 81–7Google Scholar, and Leopoldo, Solís M., Hacia una interpretación al largo plazo del desarrollo económico de México (México, D.F., 1966)Google Scholar; the former argues that the environment under Cárdenas ‘taken as a whole was more congenial to the exercise of latent entrepreneurial ability’. Solís M. stresses the positive effect of Cárdenas's agrarian reforms on the internal market, rural education and the mobility of the labour force.

⁴ Mosk, Sanford A., The Industrial Revolution in Mexico (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954), p. 60.Google Scholar Dr Mosk believed that ‘some of the additional funds that went abroad or into hoards would probably have gone into long-term investment in industry if it had not been for the Cárdenas policies’. See also Wilkie, James W., The Mexican Revolution: Federal Budget and Social Change (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), pp. 265–6.Google Scholar

⁵ Bernstein, Marvin, The Mexican Mining Industry 1890–1950 (Albany, 1965), pp. 181, 183–7.Google Scholar

⁶ See articles by Dufoo, Carlos Díaz which appeared in Excelsior, 3, 11, 25 03 1939.Google Scholar

⁷ Dufoo, Carlos Díaz, Excelsior, 3 03 1939.Google Scholar

⁸ Editorial, El Universal, 13 02. 1939.Google Scholar

⁹ Pérez Verdía, Benito X., Cárdenas frente al tinglado electoral (México, D.F., 1939), p. 45.Google Scholar

¹⁰ All the Mexico City newspapers carried constant reports of railroad crashes during the late 1930s. There is no single adequate study of the railroads' problems in these years, but the interested reader may consult Cuellar, Alfredo B., Expropiación y crisis en México (México, D.F., 1940)Google Scholar; Rodea, Marcelo N., Historia del movimiento obrero ferrocarrilero mexicana (México, D.F., 1944)Google Scholar, and Ashby, Joe C., Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas (Chapel Hill, 1967), pp. 122–41.Google Scholar Dr Ashby defends union administration of the railroads on the grounds that it was no worse than the previous management, yet it seems certain that contemporaries who had to ride the trains and read of constant disasters in the press were alarmed and disgusted.

¹¹ See Michaels, Albert L., ‘Cárdenas y la lucha por la independencia económica de México’, Historia Mexicana, xviii, 1 (1968)Google Scholar, for a general discussion of Cárdenas's policy on nationalization and its overall effects on Mexico in the late 1930s.

¹² Halperin, Maurice, ‘Mexico Shifts her Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 19 (1940), 216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see New York Times, 18, 19 Jan. and 25 Feb. 1939, for reports of Mexican-Axis trade agreements.

¹³ For Mexican foreign policy during the Cárdenas period, see Fabela, Isidro, Neutralidad (México, D.F., 1940)Google Scholar, and Fabela, Isidro, ‘La política internacional del Presidente Cárdenas’, Problemas agrícolas y industriales de México, vii, 3 (1955).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ashby, , Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas, p. 268.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 258, 260–1. Ashby believes that President Cárdenas ‘considered labor costs to be the chief contributing factor to the unbalanced financial position of the petroleum industry’.

¹⁶ In 1939 the United States government, seeking to pressure the Mexican government into paying ‘prompt and adequate compensation for the expropriated oil companies’, reduced the purchase of Mexican silver.

¹⁷ For an excellent summary of the effect of Cárdenas's reforms on the Mexican mining industry, see Bernstein, The Mexican Mining Industry 1890–1950. For contemporary fears of a catastrophe in the mining industry, see Cuellar, Expropiación y crisis en México (see also El Universal, 27 06 1930Google Scholar, and Excelsior, 30 01. 1940).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Cuellar, , Expropiación y crisis en México, p. 18.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Azuela, Mariano, ‘La nueva burgesia’, Obras completas II. Novelas (México, D.F. and Buenos Aires, 1958), p. 25.Google Scholar This novel, one of the author's best, has as its setting Mexico City during the election of 1940. It portrays a few short days in the lives of those who achieved social mobility through the reforms of Cárdenas yet felt no gratitude towards his government. The novel was first published during the early 1940s.

²⁰ Futuro, 31 (09 1938), 36.Google Scholar According to figures presented by the Bank of Mexico the cost of living had risen 56 per cent between 1935 and 1938. See El Universal, 14 03 1939.Google Scholar

²¹ Nathaniel, and Weyl, Sylvia, The Reconquest of Mexico: The Years of Lázaro Cárdenas (New York and London, 1939), p. 232.Google Scholar The Weyls' estimate was that between 1934 and 1938 the price of consumer goods increased 48·7 per cent while that of food rose 53·9 per cent.

²² Ibid.

²³ Merla, Pedro, Estadística de salarios (México, D.F., 1943), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

²⁴ See table in Wilkie, , The Mexican Revolution, p. 187.Google Scholar

²⁵ Cline, Howard F., The United States and Mexico (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 422.Google Scholar

²⁶ ‘Message of the President of Mexico’, The Bulletin of the Pan American Union, 11 (1940), 782–8.Google Scholar

²⁷ For this problem see Gómez, Marte R., La reforma agraria de México: Su crisis durante el período 1928–1934 (México, D.F., 1964).Google Scholar Gómez, Portes Gil's Secretary of Agriculture, believes that the reforms of President Calles (1924–8) and those of Portes Gil (1928–9) created a revolution of rising expectations which was not satisfied in the early 1930s, thereby causing a build-up of tremendous pressure in the countryside.

²⁸ Secretaría de la Economía Nacional, Anuario estadístico … 1940, p. 93.Google Scholar

²⁹ Financiera, Nacional, 50 años de la Revolución mexicana en cifras (México, D.F., 1963), p. 22.Google Scholar

³⁰ ‘Message of the President of Mexico’, p. 784.Google Scholar

³¹ The rural population, economically active, had jumped from 3·6 million in 1930 to 4·2 million in 1942. See Laborde, Hernán, ‘Cárdenas, reformador agrario’, Problemas agrícolas e industriales de México, iv, 1 (1952), 60.Google Scholar

³² Mexican-American Review (1931), p. 12.Google ScholarBrandenburg, Frank in his The Making of Modern Mexico (Englewood, 1964), p. 20Google Scholar, cites figures showing that less land was under cultivation in 1938 than had been in 1933.

³³ Cline, , The United States and Mexico, p. 291.Google Scholar

³⁴ Laborde, Cárdenas, reformador agrario.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 64.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Urrea, Blas (Luis Cabrera), Veinte años después (México, D.F., 1937), p. 275.Google Scholar

³⁸ Gil, Mario (Mario Gil Velasco), Sinarquismo (México, D.F., 1963), pp. 43–6.Google Scholar For an attack on the ejidal bank from the right, see Cuellar, Expropiación y crisis en México, pp. 500–1.

³⁹ Alba, Victor, Las ideas sociales contemporáneas en México (México, D.F. and Buenos Aires, 1960), p. 225.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Cabrera, Luis, ‘La cruzada del Mayas’, Hombre Libre, 1 09. 1937.Google Scholar Cabrera accused the federal government of acting through the ejidal bank to become a great hacendado.

⁴¹ Editorial in Excelsior, 2 11. 1938.Google Scholar

⁴² Townsend, William Cameron, Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexican Democrat (Ann Arbor, 1952), p. 181.Google Scholar For a general study of the Laguna and the results of the expropriation, see Senior, Clarence, Democracy Comes to a Cotton Kingdom (México, D.F., 1939).Google Scholar Both Townsend and Senior are extremely sympathetic to Cárdenas and his reforms. See also Ashby, , Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas, pp. 143–78.Google Scholar

⁴³ Confederación de Trabajadores de México, Informe del comité nacional 1936–1937 (México, D.F., 1938), p. 75.

⁴⁴ Ashby, Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas, p. 177. Ashby is extremely sympathetic and tries to explain the problems faced by new ejidatarios.

⁴⁵ Cuellar, Expropiación y crisis en México, pp. 418–19. Prewett, Virginia, Reportage on Mexico (New York, 1941), pp. 147–8.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Partido Nacional Revolucionario, La reforma agraria de Yucatón (México, D.F., 1937), p. 29.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Canton, Wilberto, ‘Cárdenas en Yucatán’, Problemas agrícoles e industriales de México, vii, 4 (1955), 368–70.Google Scholar Canton says that Cárdenas left the processing plants in the hands of the old landowners who by using them were still able to control the peasants. He accuses Cárdenas of turning to other matters, leaving the reform in Yucatan unfinished. See Prewert, , Reportage on Mexico, pp. 148–9.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Cuellar, , Expropiación y crisis en México, pp. 510–11.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Secretaría de la Economía Nacional, Anuario estadístico, 1940, p. 504.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Hombre Libre, 5 March 1957.

⁵¹ Correa, Eduardo, El balance del Cardenismo (México, D.F., 1940), p. 205.Google Scholar Also see General Reuben García, ‘Hambre, maiz, hambre’, El Universal, 30 Jan. 1939. Using statistics from the Dirección General de Estadísticos, General García discusses the crisis in food production.

⁵² Prewett, , Reportage on Mexico, pp. 148–51.Google Scholar

⁵³ For information on the Oficina de Pequeña Propiedad, see Cárdenas, Lázaro, Seis Años de gobierno al servicio de México 1934–1940 (México, D.F., 1940), p. 334.Google Scholar Hernan Laborde, Cárdenas, reformador agrario. Marte R. Gómez supplied additional information on the office's function in a conversation with Michaels, Albert L. in Mexico City on 12 01. 1965.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For Mexican labour between 1930 and 1934, see Clark, Marjorie, Organized Labor in México (Chapel Hill, 1934)Google Scholar and Salazar, Rosendo, Historia de las luchas proletarias de México (México, D.F., 1938).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Partido Nacional Revolucionario, Las jiras del General Lázaro Cárdenas (México, D.F., 1934), p. 156. This is an abbreviated record of Cárdenas's campaign speeches.

⁵⁶ For the relations between the CTM and the Cárdenas government, see Ashby, Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lázaro Cárdenas, and Michaels, Albert L., ‘Nationalism and Internationalism, Organized Labor under Lázaro Cárdenas’, University of Buffalo Studies (08 1968).Google Scholar For an almost day-by-day account covering the period up to and during 1938, see the continuation of Salazar's, Rosendo earlier book, Historia de las luchas proletarias de México (México, D.F., 1956).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Cárdenas had not always given labour a free hand. In March 1936 he and PNR President, Emilio Portes Gil, had prevented the CTM from organizing the rural workers. The government then formed them into the Confederación Nacional Campesina. For the 1936 dispute, sec Michaels, ‘Nationalism and Internationalism’, pp. 71–2.

⁵⁸ Bernstein, , The Mexican Mining Industry, p. 184.Google Scholar The Sonora copper strike of 1938 was characteristic of the government's problems. The government forced the union to accept a compromise solution, and the workers then tried to sabotage the mines which belonged to the Anaconda Copper Company; production fell 50 per cent. For details see New York Times, 20 Nov 1938.

⁵⁹ The Mexico City press is filled with accounts of the inter-union and intra-union battles which occurred during these years. See for example Novedades, 6 Aug. 1939, El Universal, 12 Aug. 1939, and Novedades, 31 Oct. 1939.

⁶⁰ Marín, Guadalupe Rivera, El Mercado de Trabajo (México, D.F. and Buenos Aires, 1955), p. 226Google Scholar, and Secretaría de Economía Nacional, Anuario Estadístico, 1940, p. 376.Google Scholar See also Wilkie, , The Mexican Revolution, p. 184.Google Scholar

⁶¹ For Cárdenas's problems with the petroleum workers in 1939 and 1940 sec Kirk, Betty, Covering the Mexican Front (Norman, 1942), pp. 64–5, 71Google Scholar, Casasela (Archivo Casasola), Historia gráfica de la Revolución, iv, 2333–4, Dufoo, Carlos Díaz, Comunismo contra capitalismo (México, D.F., 1943), p. 374.Google Scholar

⁶² El Nacional, 25 July. 1939.

⁶³ El Universal, 21 Feb. 1940.

⁶⁴ El Nacional, 25 July 1940.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 29 July 1940.

⁶⁶ Cárdenas, Lázaro, Palabras del C. Presidente de la República en el homenaje, cue le rindío el Decimosexto Congreso Nacional de la Federación de Trabajadores de México (México, D.F., 25 11. 1940).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid., pp. 4, 6–7.

⁶⁸ Townsend, , Lázaro Cárdenas, p. 88.Google Scholar Townsend, a fervent admirer of Cárdenas, blames his naïveté towards the labour bosses for most of the problems of the Cárdenas government.

⁶⁹ All these figures are taken from Whetten, Nathaniel C., ‘El surgimiento de una clase media en México’, in de Mendizábal, Miguel Othon (ed.), Las clases sociales en México (México, D.F., n.d.), pp. 53–60.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Campa, Valentín, ‘El Cardenismo en la revolución mexicana’, Problemas agricolas e industriales de México, vii, 3 (1955), 227–30.Google Scholar

⁷¹ For the efforts of Cárdenas to encourage private industry, see Shelton, David, ‘The Banking System’, Vernon, Raymond (ed.), Public Policy and Private Enterprise in Mexico (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 138–41Google Scholar, and Calvin Blair, ‘Nacional Financiera’, in Ibid., pp. 206–9. See also Aubey, Robert T., Nacional Financiera and Mexican Industry (Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 36–8.Google Scholar

⁷² Morín, Manuel Gómez, Interview with James and Edna Wilkie, Mexico City, 11 12 1964.Google Scholar

⁷³ A commission of Almazán supporters went to Cárdenas and asked him to reorganize their candidate whom they claimed had won the elections. Cárdenas, of course, turned them down, but during the interview they managed to articulate clearly many of the causes of the widespread discontent with Cardenismo. The text of this interesting confrontation was published in the journal Hoy, 7 Sept. 1940.

⁷⁴ In ‘The Mexican Left’, in Maier, Joseph and Weatherhead, Richard W., Politics of Change in Latin America (New York, 1964), p. 136.Google ScholarGruening, Ernest in Mexico and Its Heritage (New York, 1928), p. 427Google Scholar, attacks Silvano Barba González and Augustin Arroyo Ch., later prominent Cardenistas, for their corrupt practices in the 1920s.

⁷⁵ Azuela, Mariano, Avanzada (Mexico, D.F., 1940), p. 162.Google Scholar The novel describes the tragic end of a young idealist who tries to bring about technological reform in the countryside. He is harassed and finally assassinated.

⁷⁶ de Villareal, Concha, México busca un hombre (México, D.F., 1940).Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 31.

⁷⁸ Townsend, Lázaro Cárdenas, p. 335. Townsend quotes Cárdenas as saying ‘that any man who goes into public office poor and comes out rich is advertising his veniality’. Among those accused of corruption were Cárdenas's brother, Damaso and his close supporters, General Henríquez Gúzman and Ernesto Soto Reyes; thus, considerations of family and friendship might have limited the President's response.

⁷⁹ Le Front des Pauvres (Montreal, 1954).

⁸⁰ Ibid., pp. 239–41.

⁸¹ For an excellent description of the problem of political corruption in Mexico, see Sánchez, Manuel Moreno, ‘Un estudio norteamericano sobre Cárdenas’, Problemas agrícolas e industriales de Mexico (1955).Google Scholar Moreno blames traditional attitudes for much of the problem.

⁸² The text of the law was published in El Universal, 28 Dec. 1939.

⁸³ ‘Es el momento de reconquistar plenamente nuestros derechos come padres de familias’, Hombre Libre, 1 jan. 1940.

⁸⁴ See Wilkie, James W., Ideological Conflict in the Time of Lázaro Cárdenas (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1959).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Correa, El balance de cardenismo, p. 320.

⁸⁶ New York Times, 20 Jan. 1940.

⁸⁷ Urdavinia, Pedro, La situación de Mexico y ta sucesión presidencial (México, D.F., 1940), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Excelsior, 1 March 1940.

⁸⁹ El Universal, 10 March 1940.

⁹⁰ El Universal, 7 jan. 1939. An opposition group protests the admission of Spanish republican militiamen whom it called mercenaries ‘who would disturb the country's peace’.

⁹¹ New York Times, 8 Aug. 1939. A group of railroad workers withdrew from the CTM in protest over the employment of Spanish refugees as drivers and firemen.

⁹² Pérez Verdia, Benito X., Cárdenas frente al tinglado electoral, p. 66.Google Scholar

⁹³ Pérez Verdia, Benito X., Cárdenas apostol v.s. Cárdenas estadista (México, D.F., 1939), p. 85.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ For debate see Diario de los debates diputados, 12 July 1938, p. 42.

⁹⁵ See El Universal, 18 Jan. 1939, and New York Times, 12 Feb. 1939, for examples of the manifestos issued by Frente Democrático Constitutional Mexicano.

⁹⁶ Prewett, , Reportage on Mexico, p. 208.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 209.

⁹⁸ Halperin, Maurice, ‘Mexico Shifts Her Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 19 (10 1940), 220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁹ Ibid., p. 225.

¹⁰⁰ Novo, Salvador, La vida en México en el período presidencial de Lázaro Cárdenas (México, D.F., 1964), pp. 492–3.Google Scholar During his six-year term, Cárdenas had spent a total of 16 months out of the capital.

¹⁰¹ The entire text of this speech can be found in Mexicana, Partido de la Revolución, Cárdenas habla (México, D.F., 1940), pp. 248–56.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Ibid., p. 252.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Casasola, , Historia gráfica de la Revolución, v, 2365–6.Google Scholar