Cárdenas Nationalises Mexico's Oil
- Date
- 1938
- Category
- Economy & trade
- Region
- Latin America (Mexico)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
The Mexican oil expropriation was a landmark assertion of economic sovereignty by a developing nation against powerful foreign corporations.
On 18 March 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas signed a decree seizing the assets of nearly all foreign oil companies operating in Mexico—chiefly Britain's Mexican Eagle (a Royal Dutch/Shell subsidiary) and American firms such as Standard Oil. The move followed a bitter labour dispute in which the companies defied a Mexican Supreme Court ruling ordering better pay and conditions for workers. Invoking Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, which vested subsoil resources in the nation, Cárdenas placed the industry under a new state company, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). The reaction abroad was fierce: the companies organised a boycott, exports fell by half, and Mexico was pushed to sell oil to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy before the war. At home the decree was wildly popular—ordinary Mexicans donated jewellery and livestock to help compensate the firms—and 18 March became a patriotic touchstone. The expropriation established a model of resource nationalism that reverberated across the postwar developing world.
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Empires active in 1938
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related economy & trade events
- Wall Street Crash and onset of the Great Depression24–29 October 1929
- Bretton Woods Conference creates the IMF and World Bank1–22 July 1944
- Soviet First Five-Year Plan and forced collectivisation1928–1933
- Weimar hyperinflation1922–1923 (peak November 1923)
- The Panic of 1873 and the Long Depression1873–1896
- The Australian gold rushes begin1851
Further reading
The wider story
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
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