Cardenas Compromised

Fallaw Ben Fallaw

Description

Cardenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico's urban and rural labor in the Yucatan region during the regime of Lazaro Cardenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era.For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatan was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division between a powerful white minority and a poor, Maya-speaking majority, made the region the perfect site for Cardenas to experiment by launching an ambitious top-down project to mobilize the rural poor along ethnic and class lines. The regime encouraged rural peasants to form collectives, hacienda workers to unionize, and urban laborers to strike. It also attempted to mobilize young people and women, to challenge Yucatan's traditional, patriarchal social structure, to reach out to Mayan communities, and to democratize the political process. Although the project ultimately failed, political dialogue over Cardenas's efforts continues. Rejecting both revisionist (anti-Cardenas) and neopopulist (pro-Cardenas) interpretations, Fallaw overturns the notion that the state allowed no room for the agency of local actors. By focusing on historical connections across class, political, and regional lines, Fallaw transforms ideas on Cardenismo that have long been accepted not only in Yucatan but throughout Mexico.This book will appeal to scholars of Mexican history and of Latin American state formation, as well as to sociologists and political scientists interested in modern Mexico.

Sujets

• Histoire
• México
• History of the Americas
• Mexico

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 17 août 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380245
• Langue: English

Extrait

CárdenasCompromised

CÁRDENAS COMPROMISED

The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán

Ben Fallaw

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Durham and London 2001

∫2001 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Typeset in Carter and Cone Galliard by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Portions of Chapter 6 originally appeared as ‘‘Cárdenas and the Caste War That Wasn’t: Land, Ethnicity, and State Formation in Yucatán, 1847–1937,’’ inThe Americas,53 (1997).

Formywife,Mónica,and ourdaughter,AmyMaría

C o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments

i

x

Introduction: Cárdenas, the Mexican Revolution, and Yucatán 1

1 Agrarian Cardenismo, the Rise of the CGT, and the Fall of Governor Alayola, 1934–1935 15

2Left-CardenismoandtheLópezCárdenas Administration, 1935–1936 38

3 Cardenismo in Crisis: Gualbertismo, the Fall of López Cárdenas, and the Rise of the O≈cial Camarilla

4

TheCrusadeoftheMayab:CardenismofromAbove

5

9

8

0

5 Alliance Failed: Cárdenas, Urban Labor, and the Open Door Election of 1937 97

6 The Retreat of Cárdenas: The Great Ejido Plan and the New Political Equilibrium in Yucatán 125

7

Cárdenas Compromised: Cardenismo’s Legacy in Yucatán

Notes

169

List of Abbreviations

Bibliography

205

201

158

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

his book couldnot have been written without the support of a number of people and institutions. T the good fortune to study under the historians Leon As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina— Chapel Hill, I had Fink and Michael Hunt and the political scientist Je√rey Obler. There I took a class on Mexican history with Gilbert Joseph that introduced me to the subject and changed my life. Since then, he has helped me in too many ways adequately to acknowledge. During my graduate years at the University of Chicago, Friedrich Katz calmly guided me through the arduous process of fieldwork and writing, never letting me forget the human dimension of history. John Coatsworth’s clarity of thought and Sheila Fitzpatrick’s direction through the thickets of comparative peasant literature helped me finish my dissertation, ‘‘Peasants, Caciques, and Camarillas: State Formation and Rural Politics in Yucatán, 1924–1940.’’ I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Fulbright- Robles Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Center for Latin Amer- ican Studies of the University of Chicago, which enabled me to research and then write my doctoral research, which formed the basis of this book. Like many other North American scholars, during my research in Yuca- tán I crossed many bridges that Gil Joseph built between U.S. Yucatecanists and Mexican scholars. Comments from Alan Knight, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Heather Fowler-Salamini improved various parts of this project. As visiting scholars at the University of Chicago, Neils Jacobsen, Brigada von Mentz, and Guillermo de la Peña shared their insights into Latin American rural history and whetted my appetite for the archives. In Yucatán, my teacher and friend Hernán Menéndez Rodríguez—whose encyclopedic knowledge of the Yucatecan past is matched only by his bound- less enthusiasm for history—o√ered much hospitality and loaned me price- less sources. Dr. Piedad Peniché Rivero’s professional assistance as director of the state archives of Yucatán, as well as her friendship, lightened my load in