Alan Knight. Cardenismo: Juggernaut or Jalopy?.

Journal of Latin
American Studies. Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 73-107.
Key questions around Cardenismo: How radical and transformative it was?
How democratic or authoritarian Cardenismo was? In what extent the
reforms were dictated from the bottom-up or imposed to those below? How
powerful Cardenismo was or successful in achieving its goals? How much
Cardenismo actually put in practice (rather than just espouse) its radical
changes?
Analysis can be roughly categorized according to the answers to these
questions: What did the state purpose? Whom did the state represent? How
strong was the state? And what was the long term outcome of state policy?
Questions two and three demand an analysis of the revolutionary state: a
contentious subject, productive of many conflicting opinions. Questions one
and four raise the old problem familiar to all historians of continuity
versus change. Was Cardenismo in intent and practice- a radical
transforming movement/project/regime? Or did it represent more of the
same, a continuation, with certain limited adjustments, of postrevolutionary
(maybe even Porfirian) policy? (p. 74).
Historiographical approaches:

Official PRI view: insert Cardenas within the narrative of the

revolution, and defend Cardenismo as continuity, with an emphasis on
the popular character of Cardenismo.
A revisionist line stresses continuity but from a critical perspective.
Inclining to a loosely Marxist viewpoint, they conceive the revolution
as an engine of capitalist development and accumulation, as a tool for
the bourgeoisie to impose its agenda. Cardenismo served to same
purpose, coopting popular movements, subordinating them to the
state, and deepening the domestic market to the advantage of capital.
A second revisionist line refers to Cardenismo as the successful
combination of politica de masas, the subordination of popular classes
to the mighty revolutionary state. Others within the same group
concede more autonomy to state from the capital, which varies
depending from the Marxist perspective.
Other statist approach certainly consider the state, but not from a
Marxist perspective, and they refer to the continuity of state-building
process throughout the post-revolutionary period. They depict the
revolutionary state as a successful Leviathan. In relation to the
question of how much authoritarian the state was, they would say: a

lot. Cardenismo was then a juggernaut, driven by a determined

driver.
On the contrary, another approach suggests Cardenismo as a rupture,
and stresses its radical content, and its transformative goals.
Cardenismo then resumes the popular revolution of Villa and Zapata.

In short, the literature on Cardenismo suggests some significant

differences of opinion, which in turn imply contrasting interpretations of the
revolution. The differences seem to resolve around the linked questions of:
(1) continuity as against rupture at the level of policy; (2) the relationship of
the state to civil society; (3) the power of the state; and (4) continuity as
against rupture at the level of durable accomplishments (p. 77).
Contemporary viewers also sided accordingly with these lines.
Argument: I shall suggest four related points: that Cardenismo was, in
terms of its objectives, a genuinely radical movement, which promised
substantial change; that it also embodied substantial popular support, albeit
this was not mediated through liberal democratic forms of representations;
that, precisely because of its radicalism, it faced severe resistance, not only
of an overt kind, but also a more surreptitious, covert and successful kind,
which severely curtailed its freedom of manoeuvre and led it to fudge,
compromise and retreat on several issues; and that, in consequence, its
practical accomplishments were limited and even those which were attained
during 1934-40 ran the risk of being subverted in later years by more
conservative administrations [] the implication is that Cardenismo as a
vehicle for radical reform- was less powerful, less speedy, and less capable
of following its proposed route across a hostile terrain than is often
supposed; in other words, it was more jalopy than juggernaut (p. 79).
Some points to determine: who were the Cardenismo? For him, a loose,
heterogeneous coalition, put together by specific circumstances, with a host
of timeservers and opportunists. Those who displayed a genuine and
enduring Cardenista allegiance were a minority. Many of the loyal
supporters, had still ties with older traditions of liberal-patriotism,
freemasonry and Jacobinism. Political clientelism, he says, also explains
immediate support. Favors and leaders charisma played together.
Methodological approach: A thorough analysis of Cardenismo its goals, its
radicalism must take into account the different components of the
movement and the contrasting agendas they espoused. Since that is not
possible here, I shall instead focus on policies, though with the caveat that
any discussion of the policies of Cardenismo involves a good deal of

reification: that is, the abstraction of policies from the sociopolitical matrix
in which they were conceived (p. 81).
Cardenista radicalism: rhetorical, but effective in setting the political tone
and conveying political messages. It should be considered along with
practical policy, and measured by comparison with the empirical reality of
contemporary processes in Mexico and Latin America. Knight refuses the
use the category of populism. Cardenista rhetoric and practical policies:
unprecedented agrarian reform, promotion of the collective ejido, which
represented a threatening alternative to capitalism, at least at that historical
moment. State regulation of private production, feared by business
community as Communist-like interventions, as much as its labor policy, that
he considers by far more radical than elsewhere (Italy, Germany, Argentina),
which led to workers agitation, and although allowed foreign capital as a
valuable source for Mexicos development, it also nationalized selectively:
the nationalization of the oil company just responded to the uneasy conflict
between workers and the company, which Cardenas sought as a threat to
both national economic well-being and national honor and decorum. Other
examples are: the socialist education, foreign policy and sympathetic
support with the Spanish Republic, with Abyssinia, with resistance to
fascism, etc. Mexican politics experienced a moment when domestic
political differences were expressed in terms of international conflicts. All in
all, Knight says: The 1930s were emphatically not an era of bland populism.
Thus, any analysis of the Cardenista years must take into account these
powerful subjective factors which, with the perverse benefit of hindsight,
are sometimes overlooked and underestimated(p. 90).
Cardenismo then had radical rhetoric and policies, but many of them failed.
Why? Were they popular or elitist? And how effective was the state in
implementing policies despite the strong opposition? In regard to the last
questions, Knight says: a bit of both. They were emanated from above, and
also pressured from below. In some areas top-down decisions were more
apparent than in some other areas of policy where bottom-up pressures
were more significant. Popular mobilization was strong and widespread in
the 1930s. He makes some points about popular mobilization: it could be
conservative (as La Cristiada). It was unprecedented in terms of scale and
organization (mass-based political mobilization) and greater than in the
1920s or the 1950s, with ties across professions, and regions, rallying
together for the common cause of the nation. The role of the state increased,
and the popular mobilization sided with the project of shaping a stronger
state. However, Knight clarifies: the relationship between the state and

popular movements is a mutually conditional one, albeit rarely if even an

equal one. The same in the 1930s: the state needed popular support;
popular causes needed state champions (p. 93). On the contrary, top-down
determinations were less successful than pressures from-below. Agrarian
reform, for example, succeeded the most in those regions where agrarista
forces found pre-existing conditions, or prior popular mobilizations. Some
unions were by no means clients of the state (like the oil workers).
In spite of these elements, Knight considers: the popular mobilization of the
1930s, which I am choosing to stress, did not assume conventional liberal
democratic forms. It was not characterized by limpid elections and
Gladstonian notions of civic responsibility. On the contrary, it was marked by
bossism, violence, vendettas, and corruption. These liberal failings did not
make the process wholly unrepresentative, however(p. 95). Why? Because
sometimes leaders and followers were in the same track. In any case,
Mexico had a longer and more consistent tradition of popular mobilization
than of electoral democracy. Natural leaders (such as Caciques) had the
support of their people. Not all of them were the same, certainly. He says:
Caciquismo was a fact of political life, which a reforming president, anxious
for concrete results, had to reckon with. To have ignored or tried to
eliminate caciquismo would have been to risk political suicide, to invite the
fate of Ortiz Rubio, and to shelve sine die plans for social reform which were
not inherently incompatible with caciquista styles of rule (p. 98).
What about the strength of the state? It has been usually assumed Cardenas
strengthened the state. But how to determine in what extent the state was
strengthen? Just according to the growth of the federal state vis a vis
government spending? What about on the basis of the state survival and
reproduction (as the Crdenas state survived Calles opposition?
Cardenismo sought to change civil society, and introduced radical reforms,
while faced significant opposition (antithetical Catholic integralist
philosophy of Falangist-like Sinarquismo, Church hierarchy, the middle
class, foreign investors, etc. These were groups that increasingly
recognized that the revolutionary state was here to stay, that it made more
sense to connive intelligently at its deradicalisation than to strive
quixotically for its destruction (p. 100). The Church for example didnt
support La Cristiada, and employ subtle ways to oppose Cardenismo. Knight
says these big groups resisted through the weapon of the strong. He adds:
For many propertied interests, therefore, the pattern was the same: a
successful rearguard against Cardenismo during the mid-1930s (roughly,
1934-8); and a sustained revival thereafter. This was made possible by

connivance of political elites [] Structural agrarian change, the product

of popular mobilization, did not doom the regional bourgeoisie; although it
forced them to look to their defences and, in some cases, to shift their
economic resources from agriculture to industry, commerce, and stock
raising(p. 102).
The survival and consistent pattern of bourgeois recovery was made
possible by the Cardenismo itself, which had to cut deals right and left.
Conservative figures managed to survive within the political establishment,
even flaunting a spurious radicalism. They certainly remained in office, in
state and municipal governments. For them, the Cardenista regime was
less a cause to be championed than an interlude to be survived (p. 105). In
the 1940s, conservatism was back, and the shift started when Cardenas was
still in office. Between 1938 and 1940, facing serious economic difficulties
and political challenges, the administration retrenched. It reined in its
reforms and cut its social expenditure; in consequence, it alienated many of
its erstwhile supporters and the bruising 1940 presidential campaign was
marked by the wholesale disillusionment and defection of Cardenista forces
including trade unionists and ejidatarios to the Almazanista opposition
(p. 105).
The causes of the shift are related to how the war linked Mexico with the
North American economy. Rapid industrialization demanded to discipline the
organized labor, and also provoked inflation. The Cardenista coalition also
fragmented, leaving space for the opposition within and outside the party.
Perhaps this outcome was inevitable, the result of inherent contradictions,
as the movement tried to reform a dependent capitalist society without
incurring major revolutionary confrontations, and as it tried to solve the
problems of production and distribution at the same time (p. 106).
Cardenismo was weaker than what its supporters and opponents, for
different reasons, want to recognize. It certainly had a reformist record, but
the eventual outcome of these policies, differed from the goals previously
established. The key institutions of Cardenismo, Pemex, National Railways,
ejidos, the socialist schools, etc. didnt fulfill the radical high hopes of the
mid-1930s, either realize the lively fear of business man and conservative.
The institutional shell of Cardenismo remained, but its internal dynamic
was lost. In other words, the jalopy was hi-jacked by new drivers; they
returned the engine, took on new passengers, and then drove it in a quite
different direction (p. 107).