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.