<P> In 1914, Constitutionalist generals Alvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa called upon Venustiano Carranza, the political leader of the northern opposition to the government of Victoriano Huerta, to form a policy of land distribution . One of Carranza's principal aides, Luis Cabrera Lobato drafted the Agrarian Decree of January 1, 1915, which promised to provide land for those in need of it . During the Álvaro Obregón presidency (1920 - 1924), Mexico began to concentrate on land reform . Agrarian reform was a revolutionary goal for land redistribution as part of a process of nationalization and "Mexicanization". Land distribution began almost immediately and affected both foreign and large domestic land owners (hacendados). The process was very slow, however . Between 1915 and 1928, 53,000 square kilometres was distributed to over 500,000 recipients in some 1500 communities . By 1930, ejidal (communal land holdings) constituted only 6.3% of national agricultural property (by area) or 9.4% by value . </P> <P> The revolution reversed the Porfirian trend towards land concentration and set in motion a long process of agrarian mobilization . The power and legitimacy of the landlord class, which had underpinned Porfirian rule, never recovered . The radical and egalitarian sentiments produced by the revolution had made landlord rule of the old kind impossible . </P> <P> President Lázaro Cárdenas passed the 1934 Agrarian Code and accelerated the pace of land reform . He helped redistribute 45,000,000 acres (180,000 km) of land, 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km) of which were expropriated from American owned agricultural property . This caused conflict between Mexico and the United States . Cárdenas employed tactics of noncompliance and deception to gain leverage in this international dispute . </P> <P> Agrarian reform had come close to extinction in the early 1930s . The first few years of the Cárdenas' reform were marked by high food prices, falling wages, high inflation, and low agricultural yields . In 1935 land reform began sweeping across the country in the periphery and core of commercial agriculture . The Cárdenas alliance with peasant groups was awarded by the destruction of the hacienda system . Cárdenas distributed more land than all his revolutionary predecessors put together, a 400% increase . The land reform justified itself in terms of productivity; average agricultural production during the three - year period from 1939 to 1941 was higher than it had been at any time since the beginning of the revolution . </P>

Who was the mexican president who distributed land to the peasants in the 1930s