| Sumario: | This work describes the movement that led to the strengthening of the country's political center (Mexico City) during the twentieth century. This strengthening sought to end one of the great national ailments detected during the 1920's: anarchy, which had not resulted from the 1910 Revolution, but from federalism. Throughout the twentieth century there was a sustained effort to centralize government powers and functions, including of course constitutional reforms. All this created tension in the nation's federal organization, which in turn led to a new discourse exalting the capital's attributes and stigmatizing the provinces as backward, poor, ignorant, uncultured, stuck on tradition, and disinclined to revolution or modernize. This centralizing movement bore in mind the bitter nineteenth-century experience, when the center was weak and the provinces stronger. Therefore, Lázaro Cárdenas' rationale was that the entire nation's strength depended on the strength of the center.
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