VII. Mexico Since the Revolution
Hacienda cattle brand
In the summer of 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas wrote to his American friend, William C. Townsend:
We are confident that the people and the government of the United States will be able to grasp the fact that the breaking up of the large estates is the main point in our national program for improving the living conditions of the peasants of Mexico. The ideal of giving land to the masses was written into the Constitution at the cost of much bloodshed and my government is duty-bound to comply with that mandate. All the holdings that are larger than what the Agrarian Code permits are subject to distribution if there are peasants nearby who do not have land to till. Each landowner, however, is permitted to retain 370 acres, whether he is a foreigner or a Mexican.
By 1940, approximately 45 million acres of hacienda land had been turned over to the homeless and the landless by President Cárdenas (1934-1940). Three hundred haciendas in the country could claim more than 1 million acres apiece, and then only for a brief period.
The revolution had achieved an important goal. Men and women were free to live in a more congenial environment: Rurales (police) would no longer pursue them. The four-century-old illusion of a patrón (master) had vanished; in its place the workers found themselves unshackled. They were hungry but no longer whipped. Mexico began to say goodbye to the culture of poverty.
President Cárdenas, traveling from village to village, from hacienda to hacienda, crisscrossing his country throughout his term in office, listened to the little man, and the little man believed what the presidente said, as he promised roads, bridges, schools, clinics, water, and land. Millions of peasants thanked him for a home and independence.
By expropriating multi-billion dollar oil properties from foreign companies, Cárdenas returned to Mexico some of its lost pride and a hope for the future. Although agrarian reform came first on the nation's docket, there were other reforms to help man improve his lot. The ejidal bank aided the farmer by loaning him money for his plow, seeds, fertilizer, harvesting tools, oxen, mules, tractors.
By 1960, the last of the largest haciendas had been abolished: the Greene Cananea Ranch and the Hacienda Atotonilco had become agrarian property—millions of acres had returned to the people.
Mexico had become a Spanish-speaking nation. Out of a population of forty million people, only two million were now unable to speak Spanish. By 1960, a school teacher earned 36,000 pesos a year, instead of 400 pesos annually at an hacienda.
By the 1970s, about 70 percent of the children were attending primary grades, while at the turn of the century, in pre-revolutionary decades, scarcely 10 percent acquired an elementary education. By 1980, rural schools provided at least two grades, and cities offered the primary cycle through the sixth year. Ideally, a child can now attend school at five years of age, learn through six years of primary, three years of secondary, two years of preparatory, followed by three to seven years at the university level.
Article 3 of the new constitution prescribes that education, whether in national, state, or municipal institutions, should develop all the faculties, encourage patriotism and an awareness of international solidarity, shun religious dogma, advance science, and oppose fanaticism and slavery.
This progress was based on a past that combined two distinct traditions. Mexico's pre-Columbian culture had mastered concepts of intellectual and practical value, had a knowledge of astronomy, a number system, metropolitan and temple architecture, and made advances in writing, surgery and medical skills, sculpture and mural art, irrigation, and the construction of a system of highways.
The other tradition was based on the methods and knowledge that the sixteenth-century Iberian brought Mexico: the wheel, sophisticated tools, steel, industrial know-how, marine architecture, navigational skills, and gunpowder. But the Conquistadors also destroyed much. Although many of the pre-Columbian societies were warlike, the Monte Albán temples in the state of Oaxaca appear to represent a local culture that had fostered peace for some fifteen hundred years. The Iberian invaders were not familiar with such ancient traditions and often failed to appreciate their values. They destroyed towns and cities, burned books, disrupted the ecology, spread disease, and diminished the arts, crafts, and culture of the new world.
It was not until the twentieth century that Mexico came to the forefront internationally. Respect for the country grew as Mexico undertook to restore its pre-Columbian sites, assembled comprehensive anthropological collections, and established a University City and a dynamic, original metropolitan architecture. Famous artists contributed to this period of awakened cultural awareness: Roberto Montenegro, Covarrubias, Orozco, Rivera, O'Higgins, Tamayo, and Siqueiros. A folkloric ballet, a national symphony, and entertainers like Conchita Cintrón, Dolores del Río, and Cantinflas broadened the cultural landscape.
Among contemporary writers, Luis Spota, Carlos Fuentes, Sergio Galino, Luisa Hernández, Augustín Yañez, Octavio Paz, and Antonio Haas have interpreted Mexico for a large public. Leopoldo Zea and Ramón Xirau have added to Mexico's philosophical thought. Silvio Zavala has contributed to Mexican history.
The radio and television media are following American footsteps—eager to keep pace. There is no hacienda nostalgia in Mexico—only frenetic pressure for industrialization and overall capitalism. Most renowned haciendas are only memories: they are cascos, recuerdos.
The 1529 Hacienda San Gabriel de Las Palmas, in Morelos, has become an American luxury residence; other mansions house millionaires; still others have become motels, dairies, factories, schools, posh restaurants, subdivisions with an hacienda office. But hundreds of hacienda homes have been totally abandoned. They are piles of rubble—no more than place-names.
In the struggle to eliminate the hacienda system, more than eight hundred thousand men, women, and children died.
Forces that held together a dubious past seek to achieve an enlightened future. Education continues to enrich more and more lives. Mexico's present-day inflation and political corruption have halted the country's advance, but these unfortunate conditions cannot last.