Lazaro Cardenas

Lazaro Cardenas served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940, redistributing more land to peasant communities than all his predecessors combined and nationalizing the country's foreign-owned oil companies on 18 March 1938 into the company that became Pemex. As president of the ruling party he reorganized it in 1938 into a corporatist structure of labor, peasant, military, and popular sectors, the direct organizational predecessor of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that would govern Mexico for the rest of the century. He is remembered as the rare figure among the party's presidents who did not use the office to enrich himself, retiring to a modest home and spending his later years on irrigation and public health projects.