Lázaro Cárdenas

Cárdenas distributed around 18 million hectares of land to peasant communities through the ejido system and nationalised the oil industry in 1938, creating Pemex. The expropriation is still marked every 18 March, and Pemex remains a state company. The results are mixed: many ejidos stayed too small and underfunded to prosper, and the party structure he consolidated went on to govern Mexico without interruption until 2000.