What Agricultural Credit and Debt Can Tell Us about the State in Mid-century Mexico

This paper focuses on the social and political world of peasant credit and debt across Mexico from a variety of financial sources including the national government, local moneylenders, private banks, and several companies which were nationally and foreign-owned. It will demonstrate that there was continuity in amounts and strategies of government credit to peasants across Mexico from the Cárdenas through the Avila Camacho presidential administrations, thereby challenging the 1940 divide that characterizes Mexican historiography. It also lays bare the enormous absence and failures of government credit to peasants relative to the presence and qualified successes of local moneylenders and various companies in lending and debt collection. This paper argues that while there is no question that the mid-twentieth century Mexican PRIísta state was relevant, it was not ubiquitous and was therefore not necessarily the main actor in all socioeconomic realms of mid-century Mexico.