The Cardenista utopia: The Construction of the “people” during Lázaro Cárdenas government

Abstract

This article analyzes the utopian potential of Cardenismo in postrevolutionary Mexico and its relationship with the political construction of the "people". Drawing from a distinction proposed by Agamben between the People as a hegemonic political subject and the people as a subaltern multitude, I show that intellectuals linked to the government projected the creation of the Cardenista People as a unified subject, without conflicts or fissures. According to their perspective, before the arrival of Cardenismo, there was no People itself, but only a people, that is, masses of subaltern peasants with no capacity to generate political transformations. The construction of the People would then be the product of a state machinery comprising technological devices, institutions, and infrastructure. However, this conception of Cardenista organic intellectuals makes invisible the fact that popular mobilizations not only preceded and laid the foundations for Cardenista radical reforms, but also remained as an underground presence that the state machinery sought to guide and channel. The potential irruption of the heterogeneous multitude of the people and its tension with the hegemonic People constitutes the utopian promise related to Cardenismo as a political discourse.