Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was a politician and military man who held the presidency of Mexico between 1934 and 1940. He was born on May 21, 1895 in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, into a very modest family. He was one of the most loved and remembered presidents of the Mexican nation.
After joining the Mexican Revolution, he had a vertiginous rise within the army and politics of the country, occupying important positions. Among them those of the Governor of Michoacán, Minister of the Interior and Minister of War.
Cárdenas was a defender of democracy and the modernization of the Mexican state. He promoted education at all levels and created schools and educational institutions throughout the country. During his government the creation of trade union organizations was stimulated.
Likewise, he promoted agrarian reform like no other and carried out the expropriation and nationalization of the railway industry in 1937 and the oil industry in 1938. He defended human rights inside and outside of Mexico and the rights of workers and peasants.
Lázaro Cárdenas died in Mexico City, a victim of cancer, on October 19, 1970.
Biography
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río came from a family of indigenous descent with a very modest social condition. His parents were Dámaso Cárdenas Pinedo and his mother, Felicitas del Río Amezcua, who were natives of Michoacán. He was married to Amalia Solórzano with whom he had his only son: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano.
He was only able to attend elementary school, but then he worked in a printing company and completed part of his initial training. During this period, he joined the Mexican Revolution.
When the revolutionaries arrived in Jiquilpan, they asked him to print a manifesto. The document fell into the hands of the federal army, which retaliated by destroying the workshop.
Lázaro Cárdenas was persecuted and accused of supporting the Revolution. Then he had to flee to the Tierra Caliente de Michoacán in 1813. There he joined the rebel army that was fighting the forces of President Victoriano Huerta.
Within the Revolution, Cárdenas began a meteoric military career, as he managed to rise very quickly. To the point that a decade later he was already a brigadier general. He vigorously defended the constitutional cause of Venustiano Carranza. Despite the fact that a journalistic version tried to involve him in his murder in 1920.
The assassination of Carranza occurred on May 21, 1920 in Tlaxcalantongo, Puebla, at the hands of the rebel general Rodolfo Herrera. Carranza's assassin spent time in prison, but was later released in 1922.
When Lázaro Cárdenas became president of Mexico, General Rodolfo Herrera was permanently expelled from the Army.
Public charges
Lázaro Cárdenas was appointed chief of operations in Michoacán and Veracruz. Later, in return for his good performance in the army, President Adolfo de la Huerta appointed him as interim governor of the state of Michoacán. But he was only in office for three months.
Later he was appointed Secretary of the Interior in the government of President Pascual Ortiz Rubio. In this period he also entered fully into political activity as leader of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR).
The leap to politics was given by the hand of President Plutarco Elías Calles, who formed, protected and promoted him, since he saw him as a son. In 1928, he was again appointed governor of the state of Michoacán.
During his government administration he won sympathy in the town with the creation of schools and the distribution of land among the peasants. He was also a great promoter of trade union associations and advocated for the democratization of university studies.
Between 1930 and 1932, he served as the Interior Ministry in the cabinet of Pascual Ortiz Rubio and then as Minister of War from 1932 to 1934. That same year, Lázaro Cárdenas was elected President of the Mexican Republic for the period 1934-1940.
Characteristics of his government
Lázaro Cárdenas was the 49th president of Mexico. During his tenure as head of the Mexican government, he tried to consolidate the Mexican Revolution by putting into practice the ideals of equality and justice.
The main characteristics of the Lázaro Cárdenas government were:
- Deepening of the agrarian reform in Mexico as no other government had done. Agrarian ejidos were created. Some 18 million hectares were distributed between ejidos and peasant communities.
- Strong injection of resources in irrigation infrastructure and expansion of agricultural credits through the national bank..
- Another of the most outstanding features of your government was its nationalist inclination. He acted in defense of the interests of Mexico and the preservation of its natural resources.
He expropriated and nationalized the oil and rail industries of US and English capital, respectively. He created the company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).
- He had a well-earned prestige as a defender of the working and peasant class against the powerful national and transnational industry. The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) was created.
- The country was endowed with a greater infrastructure of public services through the opening of new highways and roads.
- It promoted education at all levels and the Mexican public university was democratized. Education was extended to the entire country, reaching rural and marginalized sectors. She created the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), the National School of Physical Education, the College of Mexico (Colmex) and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
- It was a government that embraced leftist ideas, which it tried to consolidate through the socialist educational system.
- Supported human rights and the strengthening of democracy in Latin America.
- The Cárdenas administration supported revolutionary causes throughout the world, welcoming politically persecuted and exiles. Especially the Spanish who fled the Civil War between 1937 and 1942. Apart from supporting the Spanish Republic with economic and political aid in international forums.
- It is considered that it was an honest government committed to the national and popular interests.
- During the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas, the programmatic and operational bases of the National Revolutionary Party were consolidated. This political organization was the antecedent of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
References
- Lazaro Cardenas. Retrieved April 20, 2018 from presidents.mx
- Lazaro Cardenas. Consulted of biografiasyvidas.com
- Early life in the biography of Lázaro Cárdenas. Consulted of labiografiade10.com
- Lazaro Cardenas. Consulted of historia-biografia.com
- National Revolutionary Party. Consulted of es.wikipedia.org
- Lázaro Cárdenas and Venustiano Carranza, on a day like today. Consulted of eluniversal.com.mx