Product Review

Now in paperback, this is the first book to analyze the link between Mexico's foreign and domestic relations in the 1930s. By studying the regime of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), Professor Schuler substantially revises our understanding of how Cárdenas asserted Mexico's economic and political sovereignty and also consolidated one-party rule and state-directed capitalism.

Amid a deteriorating international climate and worldwide depression, a cadre of technocrats and ministers under Cárdenas consistently advanced domestic goals in their foreign policy initiatives, particularly the centralization of the economy and the industrialization of Mexico. Drawing on impressive research in Mexico, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Professor Schuler shows that Cárdenas was far less of a doctrinaire leftist at home and abroad than previously assumed, especially in his ongoing economic contacts with Nazi Germany before and after Mexico's expropriation of oil in March 1938.

"A groundbreaking work."--William H. Beezley, University of Arizona