End of an Era? The Last Months of the “Last Revolutionary President”

This paper addresses the political, economic and international  conjuncture of 1938-40, which saw the end of the Cárdenas presidency and the Avila Camacho succession. It will summarise the causes, both contingent and ‘structural’, of the conjuncture; and will analyse, in rather greater detail, its consequences. Thus, it will help to set the scene for the papers which follow (especially with respect to the continued role of Cárdenas himself in Mexican politics); and it will try to shed light on the old, but unresolved, question of whether this was indeed the climacteric when the Mexican Revolution ended.