302 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
interests of the native Mesoamericans, despite the fact that Zapata himself was a mes-
tizo and that many Mesoamericans failed to join his movement.
Many of the radical social changes mandated in the Constitution of 1917 were
implemented by President Lázaro Cárdenas, a later revolutionary leader who gained
widespread support from the Indians and poor mestizos. Cárdenas curtailed the
power of the Church, although much more modestly than his predecessors; confis-Box 8.1 Lázaro Cárdenas and the IndiansLázaro Cárdenas is considered by many to have been Mexico’s most beloved and successful
president. He was born and raised in Michoacan, a state famous for its large and rebellious Taras-
can Indian people. Cárdenas came from a middle-class mestizo family, but he was very fond of
an aunt, also his godmother, who was of Indian descent. As a young man he worked in a printshop
but soon joined the revolutionary forces, where he quickly rose to prominence as a military leader.
Early on he fought against both Villistas and Zapatistas, and he became a protégé of the Sono-
ran General Plutarco Elías Calles.
Cárdenas became governor of Michoacan at the age of thirty-two, where he successfully or-
ganized popular agrarian, political, and educational groups in order to carry out socialist-oriented
policies. He gained solid support from the Tarascan Indians through his agrarian reforms and
open sympathy for their struggle against the Catholic priests and landlords. The Indians affec-
tionately referred to him as “Tata Lázaro” (Father Lázaro), a term that the Tarascans had used to
refer to revered Catholic monks during the Colonial era.
Cárdenas was chosen by Calles to replace him as president, a selection that autmatically
guaranteed his election in 1934. As president, Cárdenas became famous for his radical policies:
support for organized labor (he soon integrated the workers into a single state-backed organi-
zation known as Confederation of Mexican Workers, CTM); and the expropriation in 1938 of the
rich oil fields in the Huasteca area (for which he was wildly cheered by the Mexican people). But
his boldest policy was a vast agrarian reform. He confiscated huge tracts of lands from the rural
landlords (hacendados), many of them former revolutionary leaders, and redistributed the land
in the form of state-owned ejidosto over one million peasants.
The historian Enrique Krause (1997:452) claims that Cárdenas always had a “genuine love”
and “special connection with the Indians.” One of the main goals of his agrarian reform, in fact,
was to allow the Indians to recoup native lands they had lost through the centuries. He insisted
that the Indians were not a hindrance to “progress.” Accordingly, two of the most important
early redistributions of lands took place in Indian areas: the first in the La Laguna area of Coahuila,
and the second in Yucatán. Of the land reforms of 1937 in Yucatán, Cárdenas is reported to have
said (Krause 1997:463):... we will move on to totally resolve the agrarian problem in Yucatán, that has dragged on
for long years and we must finish with it so that we can save the indigenous peoples—the
majority of the peons in the sisal-growing zone—from their misery.
Cárdenas also founded the first Department of Indian Affairs in order to provide education,
health care, and economic improvement for the Mexican Indians (see the section to follow on “de-
velopment” in Mexico). Finally, after retiring from the presidency, Cárdenas returned to his home
in Michoacan. Like a “village priest” attending to his flock, he continued to receive, and medi-
ate disputes among, the common Indian and mestizo peoples of the region.