Mexico’s Relations with Latin America during the Cárdenas Era
Mexico’s Relations with Latin America during the Cárdenas Era
This book examines culture and diplomacy in Mexico’s relations with the rest of Latin America during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934â€"1940). Drawing on archival research throughout Latin America, the author demonstrates that Cárdenas’s representation of Mexico as a revolutionary nation contributed to the formation of Mexican national identity and spread the legacy of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 beyond Mexico’s borders. Cárdenas did more than any other president to fulfill the goals of the revolution, incorporating the masses into the political life of the nation and implementing land reform, resource nationalization, and secular public education, and his government promoted the idea that these reforms represented a path to social, political, and economic development for the entire region. Kiddle offers a colorful and detailed account of the way Cardenista diplomacy was received in the rest of Latin America and the influence his policies had throughout the continent.
Amelia Kiddle provides a much-needed inter-American analysis of Mexican policy in the 1930s.…With a truly adept multiarchival methodology, Kiddle finds that Cárdenas’s government invested significant efforts in improving the country’s international relations.
As she does in all her case studies, Kiddle marshals an impressive array of documentation to substantiate her claims.…Thanks to Kiddle’s dogged research, we now have a fuller picture of Mexico’s influence on Latin America.
A very well-written book, extremely useful for academics and yet clearly accessible for students.
This book is a most welcome addition to the literature on Cárdenas.
Amelia M. Kiddle is an associate professor of Spanish American history at the University of Calgary. She is the coeditor of Populism in Twentieth Century Mexico: The Presidencies of Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis EcheverrÃa.
