Building the revolutionary state: Obregón to Cárdenas (1920–1940)
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Flip to reveal answersWhat were the Bucareli Agreements (1923)?
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All 12 Flashcards — Building the revolutionary state: Obregón to Cárdenas (1920–1940)
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Question
What were the Bucareli Agreements (1923)?
Answer
Obregón agreed not to apply Article 27 retroactively against existing US oil companies, in exchange for US diplomatic recognition and an end to US arms sales to his rivals.
Question
What was the Calles Law (1926)?
Answer
A strict enforcement of the Constitution's anticlerical articles — closing church schools, expelling foreign priests, and requiring priests to register with the state.
Question
What was the Cristero War (1926–1929)?
Answer
A Catholic peasant uprising against religious persecution under the Calles Law, which killed roughly 90,000 people before ending in an informal truce.
Question
What was the Maximato (1928–1934)?
Answer
The period when Plutarco Elías Calles ruled Mexico indirectly as 'Jefe Máximo' through three puppet presidents, after Obregón's assassination in 1928.
Question
What was the PNR, and who founded it?
Answer
The National Revolutionary Party, founded by Calles in 1929 to unify competing revolutionary factions under one party — ancestor of Mexico's long-ruling party.
Question
How did Cárdenas end the Maximato?
Answer
After becoming president in 1934, he built his own support among peasants and workers, then exiled Calles from Mexico in 1936, ending Calles's indirect rule.
Question
What did Cárdenas do with land reform?
Answer
Redistributed about 18 million hectares, nearly double the total of all previous presidents combined, mostly as ejidos (communal peasant landholdings).
Question
What happened on 18 March 1938?
Answer
Cárdenas expropriated foreign-owned oil companies after they ignored a Mexican Supreme Court wage ruling, creating the state oil company Pemex.
Question
What was the PRM, and how did it differ from the PNR?
Answer
The Party of the Mexican Revolution (1938), Cárdenas's reorganization of the PNR into four sectors — peasant, labour, military and popular — locking mass organizations into the party.
Question
Compare US intervention before and after 1920.
Answer
Before 1920: direct military action (Veracruz occupation 1914, Pershing's Punitive Expedition 1916-17). After 1920: diplomacy and recognition tied to agreements (Bucareli 1923), and by 1938 Roosevelt's non-interventionist Good Neighbor Policy.
Question
What was muralism, and why did it matter to the Revolution?
Answer
A movement where artists like Diego Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco painted public murals celebrating indigenous history and revolutionary ideals, commissioned as part of Vasconcelos's cultural nation-building.
Question
What was indigenismo?
Answer
A cultural movement that celebrated Mexico's indigenous heritage as central to national identity, part of the Revolution's broader impact on arts, education and music.
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Topic 19.11 hub
The Mexican Revolution (1884–1940)
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