Mexico Between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934-1940

by Friedrich E. Schuler

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 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 worldwide depression, a cadre of technocrats and ministers under Cardenas 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 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.

269 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1998

Reviews

[David López · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on Mexican history, the documentation is excellent and the analysis is great. This should be an obligatory read for high school in Mexico mainly because it doesn't follow the nationalist line of Mexican official story where more events are presented in an isolated national context, when in reality the weight of foreign circumstances and actors was really big.
The book makes a comprehensive analysis of the Cárdenas regime, destroying a lot of myths but also relating really heroic tales about the adventures of Mexican politicians that made and outstanding yet forgotten job. It also shows how the best intentions and the will to achieve goals was limited for economic and social reality, a reality that Cardenas and his men knew how to take advantage of but that also limited the most sincere dreams of a generation.
In the end, you are going to realize that the Mexican oil expropriation was not just a nationalist movement but a highly calculated political move that was the cure for the mistakes of the Cardenas administration, a calculation so complex that was taking into account the movements of the most powerful men in the world, Hitler and Roosevelt.