Mexican Revolution — the 1917 Constitution and the post-revolutionary state

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Article 27 said the nation (not individuals) owned all land, water, and subsoil resources. It let the government break up haciendas for ejidos and nationalize foreign oil holdings.

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Communal land granted to a village by the state under Article 27 — worked by peasants together rather than owned individually, reversing Díaz-era land concentration.

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Labour rights: an 8-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to strike and unionize, and factory safety rules — among the most progressive labour protections in the world in 1917.

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Article 3 made education free, secular, and state-controlled (banning Church-run schools). Article 130 stripped the Catholic Church of legal status, property, and clergy's civil rights.

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Carranza, a landowner himself, enforced Articles 27 and 123 weakly — real land redistribution and labour organizing only accelerated under later presidents, especially Cárdenas.

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He stabilized the state after a decade of civil war, won US recognition (Bucareli Agreements, 1923), expanded rural schools under Vasconcelos, and began modest land redistribution.

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The period (1928-1934) when Plutarco Elías Calles, though no longer president, controlled Mexican politics from behind the scenes through three puppet presidents.

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The Partido Nacional Revolucionario (1929) united revolutionary factions and generals under one party umbrella, ending the cycle of coups and assassinations over succession.

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Calles's strict enforcement of anti-clerical Articles 3 and 130 (closing churches, expelling foreign priests) provoked a Catholic peasant uprising, mainly in central-western Mexico.

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US-brokered 'arreglos' (1929) between the government and Church restored church services without repealing the anti-clerical laws — an uneasy truce, not a clear victory for either side.

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He redistributed more land than all previous presidents combined, nationalized the oil industry (1938, creating Pemex), backed labour unions, and expelled Calles from Mexico.

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Calles was harshly anti-clerical and cautious on land reform; Cárdenas eased tensions with the Church while dramatically accelerating land redistribution — a shift in revolutionary priorities.