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.
