The Mexican Social Revolution
From a Campesino earning money via crop surplus to an employee wielding their rights to improved working conditions, never before had such groups “operated within an unusually favorable political context.” The Mexican people determined the placement of the Cárdenas reforms by pressing their grievances to a regime that garnered its ability from popular support. Indeed, the government gained from the relationship it had with its constituents; however, the citizens also expanded their power. This conversion to symbiotic control stamps the 1930s as a social revolution, with Mexico changing its “political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies.” However, because of its inciting “leftward policy swing,” the social revolution could not continue advancing. Too many groups, with more sway than peasants and everyday workers, began pressuring the executive. The Monterrey Group, foreign
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petroleum companies, dominant landowners, and even some groups within the bourgeoisie ultimately strong-armed Cárdenas to temper his policies, thus decelerating and degenerating the social revolution. While the era of progressive change came to a close in the political arena, the impact of reform had irreversibly transformed Mexican society. Foremost, the 1930s embraced and furthered the capacity for assemblies of peasant and proletariat people to lobby the government, creating the foundation for a more, yet far from absolute, democratic procedure of government.
This empowerment of the masses was both the potency behind and the outcome of the social revolution. While the political and economic policies of Cárdenas eroded in the decades of later presidents, what endured was the people’s deeper realization, and grasp of systematization, that mass mobilization could be accomplished and could, indeed, generate legitimate modification of societal mechanisms. The farming community roused agrarian reform; the force of unions kindled labor reform; the people’s voice of nationalism called upon petroleum expropriation; and the visible injustices of the rural populations brought state education to their doorsteps. The social revolution of 1930s Mexico survives as the newfound ability of relatively weak factions to bring about deep-seated reform and modification to their concern of
living.
petroleum companies, dominant landowners, and even some groups within the bourgeoisie ultimately strong-armed Cárdenas to temper his policies, thus decelerating and degenerating the social revolution. While the era of progressive change came to a close in the political arena, the impact of reform had irreversibly transformed Mexican society. Foremost, the 1930s embraced and furthered the capacity for assemblies of peasant and proletariat people to lobby the government, creating the foundation for a more, yet far from absolute, democratic procedure of government.
This empowerment of the masses was both the potency behind and the outcome of the social revolution. While the political and economic policies of Cárdenas eroded in the decades of later presidents, what endured was the people’s deeper realization, and grasp of systematization, that mass mobilization could be accomplished and could, indeed, generate legitimate modification of societal mechanisms. The farming community roused agrarian reform; the force of unions kindled labor reform; the people’s voice of nationalism called upon petroleum expropriation; and the visible injustices of the rural populations brought state education to their doorsteps. The social revolution of 1930s Mexico survives as the newfound ability of relatively weak factions to bring about deep-seated reform and modification to their concern of
living.