He is best known for nationalization of the oil industry in and the creation of Pemex , the government oil company. He also revived agrarian reform in Mexico, expropriating large landed estates and distributing land to small holders in collective holdings ejidos.
By the age of 18, he had worked as a tax collector , a printer's devil , and a jail keeper. Although he left school at the age of eleven, he used every opportunity to educate himself and read widely throughout his life, especially works of history. Both characteristics followed him through his subsequent career. In the Huasteca, U. It became the single-most powerful organization representing both workers and peasants.
He expropriated haciendas and created ejidos, collectively held, state-controlled landholdings. Ejiditarios, members of the ejido, worked individual plots of land but did not hold title to it as private property.
Once he was president of Mexico, he continued to devote government funding to the project. The murals and the texts "appropriate national historical narratives in order to supplant the national myths and locate Mexico's ideal foundations in Michoacan. But the direction of the plan was toward renewed reform. The campaign also allowed him to refine and articulate for popular consumption what he considered the important elements of the Six Year Plan.
On the campaign trail, he acted more like someone already in office than a candidate, settling disputes between groups. He reached out to Mexican workers, as well as peasants, to whom he promised land reform. He became the first occupant of the official presidential residence of Los Pinos. He had the previous residence, the ostentatious Chapultepec Castle , [18] turned into the National Museum of History.
