The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico

by John Dwyer, Gilbert M. Joseph (Editor), Emily S. Rosenberg (Editor)

Overview

In the mid-1930s the Mexican government expropriated millions of acres of land from hundreds of U.S. property owners as part of President Lázaro Cárdenas’s land redistribution program. Because no compensation was provided to the Americans a serious crisis, which John J. Dwyer terms “the agrarian dispute,” ensued between the two countries. Dwyer’s nuanced analysis of this conflict at the local, regional, national, and international levels combines social, economic, political, and cultural history. He argues that the agrarian dispute inaugurated a new and improved era in bilateral relations because Mexican officials were able to negotiate a favorable settlement, and the United States, constrained economically and politically by the Great Depression, reacted to the crisis with unaccustomed restraint. Dwyer challenges prevailing arguments that Mexico’s nationalization of the oil industry in 1938 was the first test of Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy by showing that the earlier conflict over land was the watershed event.

Dwyer weaves together elite and subaltern history and highlights the intricate relationship between domestic and international affairs. Through detailed studies of land redistribution in Baja California and Sonora, he demonstrates that peasant agency influenced the local application of Cárdenas’s agrarian reform program, his regional state-building projects, and his relations with the United States. Dwyer draws on a broad array of official, popular, and corporate sources to illuminate the motives of those who contributed to the agrarian dispute, including landless fieldworkers, indigenous groups, small landowners, multinational corporations, labor leaders, state-level officials, federal policymakers, and diplomats. Taking all of them into account, Dwyer explores the circumstances that spurred agrarista mobilization, the rationale behind Cárdenas’s rural policies, the Roosevelt administration’s reaction to the loss of American-owned land, and the diplomatic tactics employed by Mexican officials to resolve the international conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822388944
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	09/12/2008
Series:	American Encounters/Global Interactions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	402
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

John J. Dwyer is Associate Professor of History at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: The Interplay between Domestic Affairs and Foreign Relations 1

Part I. Domestic Origins of an International Conflict

1. The Roots of the Agrarian Dispute 17

2. El asalto a las tierras y la huelga de los sentados: How Local Agency Shaped Agrarian Reform in the Mexicali Valley 44

3. The Expropriation of American-Owned Land in Baja California: Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Factors 77

4. Domestic Politics and the Expropriation of American-Owned Land in the Yaqui Valley 103

5. The Sonoran Reparto: Where Domestic and International Forces Meet 138

Part II. Diplomatic Resolution of an International Conflict

6. The End of U.S. Intervention in Mexico: The Roosevelt Administration Accommodates Mexico City 159

7. Diplomatic Weapons of the Weak: Cárdenas's Administration Outmaneuvers Washington 194

8. The 1941 Global Settlement: The End of the Agrarian Dispute and the Start of a New Era in U.S.-Mexican Relations 232

Conclusion: Moving away from Balkanized History 267

Notes 85

Bibliography 343

Index 371

Editorial Reviews

The Agrarian Dispute is a tour de force. John J. Dwyer ties international relations and domestic politics in Mexico together in an exciting new way, demonstrating that the expropriation of United States–owned land by the Cárdenas regime was of crucial importance for the relationship between the two countries, Mexico’s overall economic development, and agrarian reform. Few scholars cover both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border as well as Dwyer does.”—Ben Fallaw, author of Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán


“The Agrarian Dispute will force scholars to reconsider U.S.-Mexican relations during the Cárdenas years. John J. Dwyer shows how powerful domestic and international events were affected by the actions of ‘subalterns’ and how Mexico, a relatively weak power, deftly bested the United States with creative diplomatic tactics. He also makes a convincing case that the U.S. response to Mexico’s oil expropriation in 1938 was largely determined by the earlier controversy over the land confiscations.”—Timothy J. Henderson, author of The Worm in the Wheat: Rosalie Evans and Agrarian Struggle in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Mexico, 1906–1927

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