Mexican oil expropriation in the context of Anillo Periférico

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlasaɾo ˈkaɾðenas] ; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army during the Mexican Revolution and as Governor of Michoacán and President of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He later served as the Secretary of National Defence. During his presidency, which is considered the end of the Maximato, he implemented massive land reform programs, led the expropriation of the country's oil industry, and implemented many key social reforms.

Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the Mexican Revolution and became a general in the Constitutionalist Army. Although he was not from the state of Sonora, whose revolutionary generals dominated Mexican politics in the 1920s, Cárdenas was hand-picked by Plutarco Elías Calles, Sonoran general and former president of Mexico, as a presidential candidate and won in the 1934 general election.

Pemex (a portmanteau of Petróleos Mexicanos, which translates to Mexican Petroleum in English; Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpemeks]) is the Mexican state-owned petroleum corporation managed and operated by the Mexican government. It was formed in 1938 by nationalization and expropriation of all private oil companies in Mexico at the time of its formation, making PEMEX an enduring symbol of Mexican nationalism. Pemex had total assets worth $101.8 billion in December 2019 and as of 2009 was Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue, surpassed only by Petrobras (the Brazilian national oil company). The company is the seventh most polluting in the world according to The Guardian.