Latin American Studies
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Revolutionary Ideology and Political Destiny in Mexico, 1928–1934
Lázaro Cárdenas and Adalberto Tejeda
Eitan Ginzberg xxsxis the author of Lázaro Cárdenas, gobernador de Michoacán, 1928-1932 (1999), and Genocide. Encounter and clash: The destruction of the Indian nations in Latin America (2009). His research focuses on questions of infra-political resistance, history and culture of Latin America, and the study of genocide. Dr. Ginzberg serves as a researcher at the Sverdlin Institute of Latin American History and Culture at the University of Tel Aviv.
Lázaro Cárdenas and Adalberto Tejeda, veterans of the Revolution and prominent governors of Michoacán and Veracruz from 1928 to 1932, strived to make Mexico a modern and just state on the basis of the revolutionary Constitution. Three key obstacles confronted them: the conservative approach of the political Center; the political weakness of their own power base; and the great opposing power of the farmers and their supporting elements, especially the Church and the army.
This book discusses the different avenues to reform these leaders took and their short- and long-term implications. Cárdenas sought to strengthen his position through the ruling party (PNR), while reinforcing local agrarian forces and opening channels of direct empathetic communication with the Church and the army. Tejeda attempted to strengthen his position in the federative arena, bypassing the political Center via the National Peasant League (LNC – Liga Nacional Campesina), whose establishment he was deeply involved in, making a sweeping radical reform while attacking uncompromisingly all the traditional elements of Veracruzan society.
Both political projects had unprecedented success but totally different implications. The Cardenista power base led its author to the next Presidency, during which he implemented a remarkable agrarian project. Tejeda’s power base, however, led to the utter annihilation of his political power structure and many of his agrarian achievements, as well as to his failure in the struggle for presidency. From that point of view, only a heavy bureaucratic, center-based reform initiative could succeed, while a local, radical, adventurous transformation was doomed to failure. The fate of the two governors corresponded to the fate of national revolutionary reformism and thus to the destiny of Mexico.
| Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-694-3 |
| Hardback Price: | £60.00 / $74.95 |
| Release Date: | March 2015 |
| Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-777-3 |
| Paperback Price: | £27.50 / $39.95 |
| Release Date: | March 2016 |
| Page Extent / Format: | 320 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
| Illustrated: | es, plate section and maps |
Acknowledgments
List of Tables, Maps and Illustrations
Introduction
1. Background
2. The Main Characters
3. The Conceptual Framework
4. Methodology and Sources
Chapter 1: Veracruz and Michoacán
on the Threshold of a New Era
1. Background
2. Indices of Industrialization and Political Sophistication
3. Agrarian Structure as an Index of Revolutionary Dynamism
4. Grassroots Organization and Its Influence on the Development
of Agrarianism
5. Tejeda’s Road to Power
6. Cárdenas’s Road to Power
7. Towards a New Era?
Chapter 2: Towards Reform: The
Development of Leadership Patterns
and a Political Infrastructure
1. Priorities and Modes of Operation
2. Organizing the Masses
i. The Veracruz Agrarian League: Organizational and Ideological
Bases
ii. The Veracruz League as a Power Base
iii. Why Veracruz Had No United Proletarian Front
iv. The Basis of the Michoacán Labor Confederation
v. Organization as a Reflection of the Concepts of the
State and of the Nature of Social Change
3. Taking Over the Sphere of Local Government
i. Rationale and Techniques
ii. Integration of Power in the Michoacán Municipios
iii. Integration of Power in the Veracruz Municipios
iv. The Takeover of the City of Veracruz
v. Reaping the Fruits of Success
vi. Politico-Administrative Reclassification of Villages
4. Establishing Personal Authority in the Local and National
Spheres
5. Political Power and the Test of Recognition
Chapter 3: The Shaping of a New
Civil Consciousness
1. Motives for Developing a New Consciousness and a Revolutionary
Ethos
2. The Education System before the Advent of Cárdenas and
Tejeda
3. Cardenist Education as a Revolutionary Mission
4. The Rehabilitation of the Veracruz Education System
5. The Ideological Orientation: Socialist Education in
Veracruz
6. Tejeda and Cárdenas: A Parting of the Ways
7. The Battle against the Church
Chapter 4: The Salvation of Agrarianism:
The Ejido Issue
1. Introduction
2. Missed Opportunities for Agrarian Reform
3. Saving the Ejido: The Ideological Dimension
i. Cárdenas and the Ejidal Ethos
ii. Tejeda and the Ejidal State
4. Saving the Ejido: Organization and Consciousness-Raising
i. Reinforcing the Administrative Framework
ii. The Battle over Ejidal Petitions
5. Protecting the Nascent Ejido
i. Implementing the Reform in the Field
ii. Arrangements to Help Potential Ejidatarios Survive
the Waiting Period: Veracruz
iii. Arrangements to Help Potential Ejidatarios Survive
the Waiting Period: Michoacán
6. The Implementation of the Ejidal Reform: Quantity and
Quality
i. The Cooperative Basis: Veracruz Did More
ii. Easing the Ejidos’ Tax Burden: Conflicting Trends
8. The Salvation of the Ejido: A Pyrrhic Victory?
Chapter 5: From Ejidal Agrarianism
to Total Agrarianism
1. The Importance of Private Land
2. The Return of the Forest Land to the Meseta Tarasca
Communities in Michoacán
3. Preparing the Way for the Creation of Private Smallholdings
in Michoacán
i. Back to the Old Laws
ii. Law #75: Towards a New Definition of “the Public Interest”
4. On the Way to Another Revolution: The Creation of Private
Smallholdings in Veracruz
i. Workers and Peasants in a Definitive Battle over Property
ii. The Birth of the Tenant Movement (1929-1930)
iii. Extending Land Reform to Rural Property (1930-1931)
iv. Crossing the Rubicon: Towards Total Agrarianism (June,
1932)
v. The “Tejeda Law” Undergoes the Test of Public Opinion
5. The Motives for Alternative Reform: Between Ideology
and Politics
Chapter 6: The Eradication of
Tejeda’s Power and the Contest for the Presidency
1. The Eradication of Tejedism and the Consolidation of
Cardenism
2. The Elimination of the Tejedist Ideology
3. The Elimination of Cárdenas’s Power Bases in Michoacán
4. The Contest for the Presidency
Conclusion
The Triumph of the Agrarianist Ethos
and the Fading Away of Participatory Democracy
Bibliography
Index
Herewith a major study of two towering political leaders of the Mexican Revolution:
Lázaro Cárdenas and Adalberto Tejeda. Based on extensive original
research, the book perceptively analyses the careers, ideologies,
and political strategies of two leaders known as notable radicals,
who mobilized powerful popular movements in their respective
states, Michoacán and Veracruz. Eitan Ginzberg sheds a great
deal of light on processes of popular mobilization and state-formation
in the 1920s and ’30s, with detailed analyses of both land reform
and anticlericalism; he also offers a provocative contrast between
the two leaders, suggesting why Tejeda’s intransigence led to
ultimate failure, while Cárdenas’ pragmatic approach carried
him to the presidency.
Alan Knight, Professor Emeritus of Latin
American History, University of Oxford, author of The Mexican
Revolution (CUP 1986)
Ginzberg offers a view of the post-revolutionary period and
the institutionalization of the Mexican Revolution through the
formation of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), later Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). This is a micro view of
the revolution through a comparative analysis of Lázaro Cárdenas
and Adalberto Tejeda, governors of Michoacán and Veracruz, 1928
to 1932 — two radical governors who struggled to modernize Mexico
and fulfill the promises of the Constitution of 1917. It is
a fascinating story of how the governors struggled to institutionalize
and empower the agrarian and proletariat sectors, and their
approaches to the conservative political center as they built
their own power bases. Tejada, the more radical of the two,
incorporated Marxist theories. His downfall was that he ignored
the dictates of the Jefe Maximo, Plutarco Elías Calles, who
neutralized Tejada. Cárdenas, although a staunch reformer, strengthened
his position through the ruling party (PNR), his organization
of local agrarian forces, and by opening channels of direct,
empathetic communication with the Church and the army. In contrast,
Tejeda attempted to strengthen his position in the federative
arena, bypassing the political center via the National Peasant
League (Liga Nacional Campesina—LNC). Tejeda’s failure doomed
political transformation and affected the fate of national revolutionary
reformism. Highly recommended.
Choice, R. Acuña, California
State University, Northridge
Ginzberg's careful analysis of archival sources provides insights into revolutionary politics at all level of government, sheds light on the tactics and careers of Cardenas and Tejeda, and details the struggle to implement progressive policies, particularly agrarian reforms and democratization.
Michael J. Gonzalez, Northern Illinois
University, in Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Cribe
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