The End of U.S. Intervention in Mexico: Franklin Roosevelt and the Expropriation of American-Owned Agricultural Property.

Summary

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighborhood Policy with Mexico began in 1935 with the expropriation of American-owned property, and continued over a three year period which culminated in seizure of US oil fields. Roosevelt did not intervene politically, but relied on diplomatic intervention to negotiate a settlement. It was the first time in 150 years that the US did not overtly intervene in Mexico's internal affairs.

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The End of U.S. Intervention in Mexico: Franklin Roosevelt and the Expropriation of American-Owned Agricultural Property.

The first test of President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy in Mexico was not over the March 1938 nationalization of the foreign-owned oil industry but rather involved the expropriation of American-owned rural property during the preceding three years. As president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940, Lazaro Cardenas undertook a massive agrarian reform program that redistributed nearly forty-five million acres of land, more than double the amount redistributed over the previous seventeen years combined. Included was the expropriation of approximately three million acres of American-owned agricultural property, valued between $19 million and $102 million. More than three hundred American farmers and businesses lost plots of land, ranging from as few as six to as many as four hundred thousand acres. Few American property owners in Mexico during this period survived land redistribution unscathed as it affected individual American farmers, large multinational agribusinesses, and land speculation firms. The exchange of notes between the United States and Mexico in November 1938 ended a three-year dispute over the seizure of American-owned estates and Mexico's failure to compensate U.S. landowners.(1)

In light of the overt and heavy-handed role played by the United States in Mexico's internal affairs throughout the nation's history, it is difficult to understand how the Mexican government was able to appropriate vast tracts of American-owned property without inciting a hard-line U.S. response. In 1911, U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson conspired with Felix Diaz and General Victoriano Huerta to overthrow President Francisco Madero because Madero would not show special favors to U.S. economic interests. In 1914, U.S. Marines occupied the port city of Veracruz for nine months to prevent Huerta from receiving German arms shipments, while in 1916, more than ten thousand U.S. troops spent close to a year in northern Mexico pursuing rebel leader Francisco "Pancho" Villa. From 1913 to 1917, Washington would not officially recognize the Mexican government; from 1920 to 1923, the United States again broke off relations because American-owned property in Mexico was threatened by the possible enforcement of the expropriation decrees contained in the 1917 Mexican Constitution. Finally, in 1927 there was talk of war between the two countries when Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles supported the anti-American uprising of Juan Sacasa in Nicaragua and implemented a new petroleum law that threatened to undermine the American-owned oil companies operating in Mex...

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