Building the revolutionary state: Obregón to Cárdenas (1920–1940) (History HL)

By 1920 the fighting of 1910–1917 was over, but Mexico still had to be turned into a working state. That job fell to two generals from Sonora: Álvaro Obregón (president 1920–1924) and Plutarco Elías Calles (president 1924–1928).

Obregón's priority was survival. He needed recognition from the United States, so in the Bucareli Agreements (1923) he promised not to apply Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution retroactively against US oil companies. In return, Washington recognised his government and stopped arming his rivals. At home, Obregón built support by giving land to peasants under Article 27 and backing his education minister, José Vasconcelos, in a huge literacy and rural-schools campaign.

Why land and schools mattered: Obregón and Calles could not rule by force alone — the army was small and the treasury was empty. Land grants (ejidos) and rural schools bought the loyalty of peasants who might otherwise back a new rebellion, a cheaper way to hold power than paying for a huge standing army.

Calles went further. He founded the National Bank of Mexico (1925), built irrigation and road projects, and expanded rural schools. But his most explosive move was religious: the Calles Law (1926) enforced the Constitution's anticlerical articles — closing church schools, expelling foreign priests, and requiring priests to register with the state. The Catholic Church responded by suspending all religious services in Mexico.

The Cristero War (1926–1929): Devout Catholics, mostly peasants in central-west Mexico, took up arms shouting "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King). This Cristero War killed roughly 90,000 people before US-brokered talks ended it in 1929 with an informal truce — the Calles Law stayed on the books but was rarely enforced.

Obregón was re-elected in 1928 but assassinated by a Catholic militant before taking office. This crisis let Calles keep control without holding the presidency himself — a period historians call the Maximato (1928–1934), named after his title of Jefe Máximo (Supreme Chief). Calles ruled through three puppet presidents (Portes Gil, Ortiz Rubio, Rodríguez) and, in 1929, founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) — the ancestor of the party that would govern Mexico for the rest of the 20th century.

Assessing Obregón and Calles: For a "to what extent" essay, weigh achievements (land reform, schools, a functioning party system, ending foreign-policy isolation) against failures (still a personalist, one-man rule behind the Maximato; land reform was slow; the Cristero War revealed how divisive anticlericalism was).

Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934, chosen by Calles as another puppet. Cárdenas had other plans. Within two years he built his own base among peasants and workers, then exiled Calles from Mexico in 1936 — ending the Maximato and reclaiming real presidential power.

Cárdenas's aim was to complete, not just manage, the revolution. His methods were direct and popular:

Why the oil expropriation mattered: The 1938 nationalization was hugely popular in Mexico — ordinary citizens donated money to help pay compensation — but it enraged Britain and the US oil firms. It is the clearest example of the 1917 Constitution's Article 27 (subsoil resources belong to the nation) finally being enforced against powerful foreign companies.

Cárdenas also expanded rural and socialist education (Article 3 reform of 1934), built new schools in the countryside, and gave asylum to Spanish Republican refugees and to Leon Trotsky. By 1940, when he peacefully handed power to his chosen successor Manuel Ávila Camacho, Cárdenas had shown that a revolutionary president could reform the economy in favour of workers and peasants and still respect the constitutional limit of one term.

Continuity or change?: A strong essay argues Cárdenas both continued the state-building of Calles (using the party machine, controlling labour through official unions) AND radically renewed the revolution's original social promises (land, oil, education) that Calles had let stall.

The United States shaped the Revolution from the start. Woodrow Wilson's government intervened directly — occupying Veracruz (1914) to weaken Huerta, and sending the Punitive Expedition under General Pershing (1916–17) into northern Mexico after Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico. Neither achieved its goal, and both intensified Mexican nationalism and distrust of the US.

After 1920, US influence shifted from military force to economic and diplomatic pressure — withholding recognition until the Bucareli Agreements (1923), and, under Ambassador Dwight Morrow (1927–1930), quiet diplomacy that helped end the Cristero War. Britain's stake was mainly its oil investments, which is why Britain broke off relations with Mexico after the 1938 expropriation — while the US, under Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, chose negotiation over intervention and accepted a compensation deal in 1942.

The Revolution reshaped Mexican society and culture far beyond politics. Women took part as soldaderas (women who fought or supported troops in the field) and later organized for suffrage, though they would not win the national vote until 1953. Education expanded hugely — Vasconcelos's rural-schools campaign in the 1920s and Cárdenas's socialist-education programme in the 1930s cut illiteracy and spread a new sense of national identity beyond Mexico City.

Two different roles for the US: Keep the timeline straight: direct military intervention (Veracruz, Pershing) belongs to the 1910–1920 fighting; after 1920 the US relies on recognition, diplomacy and, by the Cárdenas era, the Good Neighbor Policy of non-intervention.

Naming names: Only individuals named in the guide are examinable for this section: Porfirio Díaz, Madero, Villa, Zapata, Carranza, Obregón, Calles and Cárdenas. Muralists, ambassadors and cultural figures above are useful illustrative detail, not separately-listed guide content — use them to enrich, not replace, the core individuals.