This is the first book to analyse the link between Mexico's foreign and domestic relations in the 1930s. By studying the regime of President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), Professor Schuler substantially revises our understanding of how Cardenas asserted Mexico's economic and political sovereignty and also consolidated one-party rule and state-directed capitalism. Amid a deteriorating international climate and world-wide depression, a cadre of technocrats and ministers under Cardenas consistently advanced domestic goals in their foreign policy initiatives, particularly the centralisation of the economy and the industrialisation of Mexico. Drawing on impressive research in Mexico, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Professor Schuler shows that Cardenas 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.
