National Peasant Federation (CNC)

Founded under president Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) to support peasant interests, the CNC, Mexico's largest peasant union, in reality functioned as an important institution in the corporatist structure of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional—PRI) and its antecedents. The CNC forms the primary basis of one of the party's three sectors (agrarian, labor, popular), but it has exerted the least influence within the party and governmental leadership, in terms of both policy and personnel. Its leadership has been co-opted by the government, and its members have the least representation in legislative and national party committees. In the early 1990s, however, the CNC did protest some of the PRI's free trade policies. Under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico entered into a free trade agreement with Canada and the United States (establishing NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Association), which subjected peasants to stiff foreign agricultural competition. Also, in 2000 Mexico made a partial transition to democracy, when for the first time an opposition candidate won the presidency. This electoral win weakened the CNC's overall strength, as the PRI lost its substantial control over the federal government.

See alsoCárdenas del Río, Lázaro; Mexico, Political Parties: Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Moisés González Navarro, La Confederación Nacional Campesina (1977).

Steven Sanderson, Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State (1981).

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Soto y Gama, Antonio, with Pedro Castro. Historia del agrarismo en México. Mexico City: Era, 2002.

Rojas Herrera, Juan José. Auge y decadencia del corporativismo agrario en México, 1934–1997. Chapingo, México: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 1998.

                                       Roderic Ai Camp