A Wayuu rancheria, located in the Guajira Peninsula, Colombia.

The Spanish word ranchería, or rancherío, refers to a small, rural settlement. In the Americas the term was applied to native villages and to the workers' quarters of a ranch.^[1][2] English adopted the term with both these meanings, usually to designate the residential area of a rancho in the American Southwest, housing aboriginal ranch hands and their families. The term is still used in other parts of Spanish America, for example, the Wayuu tribes in northern Colombia call their villages rancherías.

The Columbia Encyclopedia describes it as:

"a type of communal settlement formerly characteristic of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico, and of various small Native American groups of the SW United States, especially in California. These clusters of dwellings were less permanent than the pueblos (see Pueblo) but more so than the camps of the migratory Native Americans."^[3]The term could be applied to the settlements of the California Mission Indians beyond the Spanish missions, such as Maugna of the Tongva people.

History[link]

In California, the term refers to a total of 59 Indian settlements established by the U.S. Government, 54 of them between 1906 and 1934, for the survivors of the aboriginal population. San Diego State University maintains a reference titled California Indians and Their Reservations: An Online Dictionary. It says:

"The Spanish term for small Indian settlements. Rancherías are a particular California institution. A small area of land was set aside around an Indian settlement to create a ranchería. Some rancherías developed from small communities of Indians formed on the outskirts of American settlements who were fleeing Americans or avoiding removal to the reservations. […] With the passage of Public Law 83-280 in the mid-1950s, terminating federal supervision and control over California tribes, some 40 rancherías lost the right to certain federal programs, and their lands no longer had the protection of federal status. In 1983, a lawsuit resulted in restoring federal recognition to 17 rancherías, with others still waiting for the reversal of their termination."^[4]

The word migrated north with the 49ers to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in an adapted form, "rancherie". It survives in British Columbia as a somewhat archaic but still commonly used word, in rural areas and small towns, as well as in general First Nations English usage, meaning the residential area of an Indian Reserve. It especially means the historical residential area, as opposed to newer subdivisions. It was further extended to refer to other non-white residential communities, such as the Kanaka Rancherie in early Vancouver, British Columbia, which came to house the city's Kanaka (Hawaiian) residents. In an even more truncated form, the Ranche was used to refer to the Tlingit portion of Sitka, Alaska.

See also[link]

• Indian colony
• Indian reserve, Canada
• Indian reservation
• Rancherie, Canada

References[link]

1. ^ Aristos: Diccionario ilustrado de la lengua española. Barcelona: Ramón Sopena. 1982. pp. 516. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/84-303-0949-9|84-303-0949-9]]. "Ranchería: Collection of rustic homes or huts which form a sort of settlement." 
2. ^ Real Academia Española (2001). "Diccionario de la lengua española: Vigésima segunda edición". http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/. Retrieved 14 December 2010. "Ranchería: Collection of huts which form a sort of settlement. Rancherío: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Disorganized and squalid collection of precarious homes in rural areas." 
3. ^ Rancheria. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07 (retrieved 12 April 2009)
4. ^ California Indians and Their Reservations. San Diego State University Library and Information Access. (retrieved 12 April 2009)

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Lázaro Cárdenas
44th President of Mexico
In office 1 December 1934 – 30 November 1940
Preceded by	Abelardo L. Rodríguez
Succeeded by	Manuel Ávila Camacho
Governor of Michoacán
In office 1928–1932
Preceded by	Luis Méndez
Succeeded by	Dámaso Cárdenas
Personal details
Born	(1895-05-21)21 May 1895 Jiquilpan, Michoacán
Died	19 October 1970(1970-10-19) (aged 75) Mexico DF
Nationality	Mexican
Political party	Party of the Mexican Revolution
Spouse(s)	Amalia Solórzano

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.

Early life[link]

Lázaro Cárdenas was born on 21 May 1895 in a lower-middle class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán. He supported his family (including his mother and seven younger siblings) from age 16 after the death of his father. By the age of 18 he had worked as a tax collector, a printer's devil, and a jailkeeper. Although he left school at the age of eleven, he used every opportunity to educate himself and read widely throughout his life, especially works of history.

Cárdenas set his sights on becoming a teacher, but was drawn into politics and the military during the Mexican Revolution after Victoriano Huerta overthrew President Francisco Madero. He backed Plutarco Elías Calles, and after Calles became president, Cárdenas became governor of Michoacán in 1928. During his four years as governor, Cárdenas initiated a modest re-distribution of land at the state level, encouraged the growth of peasant and labour organisations, and made improvements to education at a time when it was neglected by the federal government. Cárdenas ensured that teachers were paid on time, made personal inspections of many classrooms, and opened a hundred new rural schools. His grassroots style of governing was such that during his time as governor, Cárdenas made important policy decisions based on direct information received from the public rather than on the advice of his confidants.^[1]

Presidential career[link]

Calles continued to dominate Mexico after his presidency with administrations that were his puppets. After having two of his hand-picked men put into the position, the PNR balked at his first choice, Manuel Pérez Treviño, in 1932. Instead they selected Cárdenas to be the ruling party's presidential candidate, and Calles went along with it, thinking he could control him as he had the previous two. This however, was not so. Cárdenas's first move once he took office late in 1934 was to have his presidential salary cut in half. Even more surprising moves would follow. After establishing himself in the presidency, Cárdenas and the Mexican Congress turned on Calles and condemned his continued war-like persecution of the Catholic Church.^[2] In 1936, Cárdenas had Calles and twenty of his corrupt associates arrested and deported to the United States,^[3] a decision that was greeted with great enthusiasm by the majority of the Mexican public. During the course of his presidency, Cardenas became known for his progressive program of building roads and schools and promoting education, with twice as much federal money allocated to rural education than all his predecessors combined.^[1] He also promoted land reform and social security.

During his time in office, Cárdenas openly sought the National Revolutionary Party's six-year plan of social and political reform.^[3] The plan called for 1) restoration of the system of ejidos (common lands) through a strong agrarian program to combat the domination of the large haciendas; 2) modern secular schools that would teach rationalist doctrines and combat the "fanaticism" of the Church; 3) workers' cooperatives to oppose the excesses of industrial capitalism.^[3] Cárdenas subsequently decreed the end of the use of capital punishment (in Mexico, usually in the form of a firing squad). Capital punishment has been banned in Mexico since that time. The control of the republic by Cárdenas and the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) predecessor Partido de la Revolución Mexicana without widespread bloodshed effectively signalled the end of rebellions that began with the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Despite the fact that Cardenas enforced a policy of socialist education, relations with the church also improved greatly during his time in office.^[4]

Cárdenas was perhaps the only Mexican President who never employed armored cars or bodyguards to protect himself. In the presidential campaign of 1934, he travelled through much of the republic that was not accessible by train, by auto and horseback, accompanied only by a chauffeur and an aide-de-camp. This fearlessness generated widespread respect for Cárdenas by the electorate. He became the first occupant of the current official presidential residence of Los Pinos, and converted the previous residence, the ostentatious viceregal and Mexican imperial palace, Chapultepec Castle, into the National Museum of History.

Russian exile Leon Trotsky was welcomed into Mexico by Cárdenas, reportedly to counter accusations that Cárdenas was a Stalinist. Cárdenas, like his 1920s predecessor Álvaro Obregón, understood that left wing and labor union support was critical to maintain control of the republic. The bloated and corrupt CROM union of Luis Morones was marginalized as Cárdenas promoted the "purified" Confederation of Mexican Workers of socialist Vicente Lombardo Toledano. The CTM and Toledano in turn supported Cárdenas' deportation of ex-President Calles. Cárdenas was not as left-wing as Leon Trotsky and other socialists would wish, but still Trotsky described the Cárdenas's government as the only honest government in the world.

Cárdenas sought to actively help the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War, but those efforts were largely thwarted by the Roosevelt administration. After the war ended with the defeat of the loyalist Republicans, Cárdenas gave specific instructions to his ambassador and envoys in Europe to give safe haven and protection to all exiles, including President Manuel Azaña, actively sought for deportation by the Spanish fascist government and by French collaborationist authorities. Azaña died in France under Mexican diplomatic protection, but Cárdenas was able to bring to Mexico tens of thousands of refugees, among them distinguished intellectuals who left a lasting imprint in Mexican cultural life. But not only intellectuals were granted asylum in Mexico: from the 4,559 passengers who arrive to Mexico in 1939 on board the ships Sinaia, "Ipanema and Mexique, for example, the largest groups were formed by technicians and qualified workers (32%), farmers and ranchers (20%), along with professionals, technicians, workers, business people students and merchants – this last group representing 43% of the total.^[5]

Cárdenas is considered by many historians to be the creator of a political system that lasted in Mexico until the end of the 1980s. Central to this project was the organization of corporatist structures for trade unions, campesino (peasant) organizations, and middle-class professionals and office workers within the reorganized ruling party, now re-named the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). During Cárdenas's presidency, the government enacted a great deal of the land reform that Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata had envisioned and redistributed 45 million acres (180,000 km²) of hacienda land to peasants.^[6] Additionally, urban and industrial workers gained unprecedented unionization rights and wage increases. The railway Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México was nationalized in 1938 and put under a "workers administration." However, Cárdenas and subsequent presidents also used the PRM and its successor, the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI, to maintain political control; leaders of the worker and campesino organizations delivered votes and suppressed protests in exchange for personal favors and concessions to their constituencies.

At first, the oil nationalization policy earned Cardenas great respect among Mexicans and in many other Latin America countries.^[4] In later years, however, Cardenas's oil policy proved to be unpopular.^[7] Vincente Lombardo Toledano took advantage of Cardenas' unpopularity and organized pro-Communist militias.^[7] This move by Lombardo would lead to the rise of ring-wing militias lead by General Juan Andreu as well.^[8]

In the elections of 1940, Cárdenas, with hopes of preventing another uprising in the country, surprised people and endorsed the PRM nominee Manuel Ávila Camacho,^[8] a moderate conservative^[9] whom he hoped would salvage some of his liberal policies^[8] and act as a compromise candidate between liberals and conservatives in the country against Ávila's opponent, Juan Andreu. Open and free campaigning was anticipated. The elections, however, did not follow the pattern Cárdenas wished. The campaign was peppered with violent incidents and, on election day, the opposing parties hijacked numerous polling places and each issued their own "election results." After "official" results declared Ávila as winner, Andreu threatened revolt and then attempted to set up a parallel government and congress. Nevertheless, Ávila crushed Almazan's forces^[7] and assumed office.^[7] His inauguration was attended by US Vice President-elect Henry A. Wallace,^[7] who was appointed by the US as a "special representative with the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary" for Mexico.^[7]

Oil expropriation[link]

Also central to Cárdenas's project were nationalistic economic policies involving Mexico's vast oil production, which had soared following strikes in 1910 in the area known as the "Golden Lane," near Tampico, and which made Mexico the world's second-largest oil producer by 1921, supplying approximately 20 percent of domestic demand in the United States.

Cárdenas's efforts to negotiate with Mexican Eagle, in the managerial control of Royal Dutch/Shell and Standard Oil of New Jersey, were unavailing, and the companies rejected a solution proposed by a presidential commission. So at 9:45 pm on the evening of 18 March 1938, Cárdenas nationalized Mexico's petroleum reserves and expropriated the equipment of the foreign oil companies in Mexico. The announcement inspired a spontaneous six-hour parade in Mexico City; it was followed by a national fund-raising campaign to compensate the companies.

Even though compensation for the expropriated assets was included in this legislation, the act angered the international business community and vexed Western governments, especially the United Kingdom. The government was more worried about the lack of the technical knowledge required to run the refineries. Before leaving, the oil companies had made sure they did not leave behind anything of value to the Mexican government, hoping to force Cárdenas to accept their conditions. Although Mexico was eventually able to restart the oilfields and refineries, production did not rise to pre-takover levels until after the entry of the United States into World War II, when technical advisers were sent by the United States as part of the over-all Allied war effort.

The British severed diplomatic relations with Cárdenas's government, and Mexican oil and other goods were boycotted, despite an international ruling in favor of Mexico's government. However, with the outbreak of World War II, oil became a highly sought-after commodity. Mexico began to export oil to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.^[10]

The company that Cárdenas founded, Petróleos Mexicanos (or Pemex), would later be a model for other nations seeking greater control over their own oil and natural gas resources and, 70 years later, it remains the most important source of income for the country, despite weakening finances. Seeing the need to assure the technical expertise needed to run it, Cárdenas founded the National Polytechnic Institute.

Post-presidential career[link]

After his presidential term, Cárdenas served as Mexico's secretary of defense until 1945.

It is often said that Lázaro Cárdenas was the only president associated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who did not use the office to make himself wealthy. He retired to a modest home by Lake Pátzcuaro and worked the rest of his life supervising irrigation projects and promoting free medical clinics and education for the nation's poor. He also continued to speak out about international political issues and in favor of greater democracy and human rights in Latin America and elsewhere. For example, he was one of the participants in the Russell Tribunal for investigating war crimes in Vietnam.

Lázaro Cárdenas died of cancer in Mexico City on 19 October 1970 at the age of 75. His son Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and his grandson Lázaro Cárdenas Batel have been prominent Mexican politicians.

In his honor, his name was given to a number of cities, towns, and a municipality in Mexico, including Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, the municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas, Quintana Roo and other smaller communities. There are also many streets that have been named after him, including the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico City, and highways in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexicali. Šetalište Lazaro Kardenasa (Lázaro Cárdenas promenade) in Belgrade, Serbia, is also named after him, as is a street in Barcelona, Spain, and a monument in a park in Madrid dedicated to his memory for his role in admitting defeated Spanish Republicans to Mexico after the Civil War in that country.

In 1955 Lázaro Cárdenas was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, which was later renamed for Lenin as part of de-Stalinization.

Legacy[link]

President Cárdenas and his administration are given credit by socialists for expanding the distribution of land to the peasants, establishing new welfare programs for the poor, and nationalizing the railroad and petroleum industries, including the oil company that Cárdenas founded, Petróleos Mexicanos. Toward the end of his presidency, unhappy landowners and foreign capitalists began to challenge his programs and his power.

Cárdenas's party, the PRI, continued in power until 2000. This is attributed by some to electoral fraud and coercion. This legacy led his son, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, to form the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) to contest the 1988 presidential election. Since that year, the PRD has become one of the three major parties in Mexico, gaining working class support that was previously enjoyed by the PRI.

In his Political Testament, written the year before his death and published posthumously, he acknowledged that his regime had failed to make the changes in political distribution and corruption that were the basis for his presidency and the revolution. He expressed his dismay in the fact that some people and groups were making themselves rich to the detriment of the mainly poor majority. It was said about Cárdenas at his eulogy that, “he was the greatest figure produced by the revolution… an authentic revolutionary who aspired to the greatness of his country, not personal aggrandizement.”

Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay patterned his people–oriented government on the principles which he found in the 1952 edition of the biography of past President Lázaro Cárdenas, which was written by William Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International).

See also[link]

• History of Mexico

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Riding, Alan Distant Neighbors. New York City: Vintage Books – Random House, 1986.

• Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan peasants, and the redemption of the Mexican Revolution. Berkelely: University of California P, 1995.

• Leonard, John; Rankin, Monica; Smith, Joesph et el. (September 2006), Latin America during World War II, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-7425-3741-2 

• La Cultura de Mexico, quoted in Manual Suarez Valles, Lazaro Cardenas: una vida fecunda al servicio de Mexico (Mexico City, 1971) p. 25.

• Jeffrey Kent Lucas. The Rightward Drift of Mexico's Former Revolutionaries: The Case of Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.

• The Political Legacy of Lázaro Cárdenas Author(s): Charles H. Weston, Jr. Source: The Americas, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jan., 1983), pp. 383–405 Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/981231 Accessed: February 26, 2009 14:16

• Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan peasants, and the redemption of the Mexican Revolution. Berkelely: University of California P, 1995.

• Smith, Peter H. (April 1996), Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S. – Latin American Relations (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN 0-19-508303-2 

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Emiliano Zapata Salazar (August 8, 1879 – April 10, 1919) was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the president Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force, the Liberation Army of the South, during the Mexican Revolution. Followers of Zapata were known as Zapatistas.^[1] He is a figure from the Mexican Revolution era who is still revered today.

Biography[link]

Emiliano Zapata was born to Gabriel Zapata and Cleofas Salazar of Zacatepillo. Zapata's family were Mexicans being of mixed Nahua and Spanish ancestry;^[2] Emiliano was the ninth of ten children. A peasant since childhood, he gained insight into the severe difficulties of the countryside.^[3] He received a limited education from his teacher, Emilio Vara. He had to care for his family because his father died when Zapata was 17. Around the turn of the 20th century Anenecuilco was an indigenous Nahuatl speaking community; there exist eyewitness accounts stating that Emiliano Zapata spoke Nahuatl fluently.^[4]

Birthplace of Emiliano Zapata in Anenecuilco, today a house museum

A graphical timeline is available at Timeline of the Mexican Revolution

After Porfirio Díaz rose to power in 1876, the Mexican social and economic system was essentially a proto-capitalist^{[citation needed]} feudal system, with large estates (haciendas) controlling much of the land and squeezing out the independent communities of the people who were subsequently forced into debt slavery (peonaje) on the haciendas. Díaz ran local elections to pacify the people, and a government that could be argued was self-imposed. Under Díaz, close confidants and associates were given offices in districts throughout Mexico. These officials became enforcers of "land reforms" that drove the haciendas into the hands of progressively fewer and wealthier landowners.

Zapata came from an Indian family (so did Diaz) and got married to a Mexican woman from a middle class family that was able to avoid peonage, as well as maintain their own land (rancho). In fact, the family had been porfiristas: supporters of Porfirio Díaz. In 1906, he attended a meeting in Cuautla to discuss a way to defend the land of the people, on which he had worked as a farmhand. In 1908, due to his first acts of rebellion, he was drafted into the Ninth Regiment and sent to Mexico. However, because of his skill with horses, he remained a soldier for only six months. At the request of Ignacio de la Torre, who employed him as a groom, he left for Mexico City.^[5] Though his gaudy attire might have suggested an affiliation with the rich hacendados who controlled the lands, he retained the admiration of the people of his village, Anenecuilco.

In 1909 an important meeting was called by the elders of Anenecuilco, whose chief elder was José Merino in which he announced his intention to resign from his position due to his old age and limited abilities to continue the fight for the land rights of the village. The meeting was used as a time for discussion and nomination of individuals as a replacement for Merino as the president of the village council. The elders on the council were so well respected by the village men that no one would dare to override their nominations or overtake the vote for an individual against the advice of the current council at that time. The nominations made were: Modesto Gonzales, Bartolo Parral, and Emiliano Zapata. After the completion of nominations, a vote was taken and Zapata became the new council president without contest.^[6]

Although Zapata had turned 30 only a month before, the voters knew that it was necessary to elect an individual who would be responsible for the village and who was well respected by the village people. Even though he was young, the village was ready to hand over the controlling force to him without any worry of failure. Before he was elected he had shown the village his nature by helping to head up a campaign in opposition to a candidate for governor. Even though his efforts and his cause failed greatly, he was able to create and cultivate relationships with political authority figures that would prove useful for him.^[6]

Zapata became a leading figure in the village of Anenecuilco, where his family had lived for many generations, and he became involved in struggles for the rights of the campesinos of Morelos. He was able to oversee the redistribution of the land from some haciendas peacefully, but had problems with others. He observed numerous conflicts between villagers and hacendados, or landowners, over the constant theft of village land, and in one instance, saw the hacendados torch an entire village.

For many years, he campaigned steadfastly for the rights of the villagers, first establishing via ancient title deeds their claims to disputed land, and then pressing the recalcitrant governor of Morelos into action. Finally, disgusted with the slow response from the government and the overt bias towards the wealthy plantation owners, Zapata began making use of armed force, simply taking over the land in dispute.

The 1910 Revolution[link]

Pancho Villa (Left) "Commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North)" and Emiliano Zapata "Commander of the Ejército Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South). Villa is sitting in the presidential throne in the Palacio Nacional.

At this time, Porfirio Díaz was being threatened by the candidacy of Francisco I. Madero. Zapata, seeing an opportunity to promote land reform in Mexico,^[7] made quiet alliances with Madero, whom he perceived to be the best chance for genuine change in the country.^[8] Although he was wary about Madero,^[8] Zapata cooperated with him when Madero made vague promises about land reform.^[8] Land reform would be the only issue which Zapata cared about.^[8]

Zapata joined Madero’s campaign against President Diaz.^[9] When Zapata's army captured Cuautla after a six-day battle on May 19, 1911,^[8] it became clear the Diaz would not hold on to power for long.^[9] With the support of Pancho Villa, Pascual Orozco, Emiliano Zapata, and rebellious peasants, Madero overthrew Díaz in May 1911 at the Battle of Ciudad Juárez. A provisional government was formed under Francisco León de la Barra. Under Madero, some new land reforms were carried out and elections were to be ensured. However, Zapata was dissatisfied with Madero's stance on land reform, which Madero did not really believe in,^[9] and was unable, despite repeated efforts, to make him understand the importance of the issue or to get him to act on it.