Against Capital and Foreigners

Abstract

This chapter examines the expropriation of American and Los Angeles-owned properties in Mexico between 1920 and 1940. As the Mexican Revolution shifted Mexico toward economic nationalism, Los Angeles investors faced the process of expropriation and profit loss. Under the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and from the presidency of Álvaro Obregón through the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, rural Mexicans pushed the Mexican state to confiscate foreign-owned investment properties, including agricultural land and oil properties. Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, led many of the efforts to prevent the expropriation of American-owned investment properties under Article 27 of the Mexican constitution. Ultimately, however, American investors lost control of their properties through the expropriation process, adjudicated by the U.S.-Mexican Claims Commissions in the 1930s. Despite these economic losses, efforts to prevent expropriation and win compensation continued to link an urban core in Los Angeles to a Mexican periphery.