In the mid-1930s the Mexican government expropriated millions of
acres of land from hundreds of U.S. property owners as part of
President Lazaro Cardenas'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 Cardenas'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 Cardenas'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.
General
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