Labor unions and civic organizations protested Mexico’s energy reforms on the 77th anniversary of the nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry, Wednesday, March 18.
President Enrique Peña Nieto also marked the anniversary of the expropriation, which was signed into law by President Lazaro Cardenas in 1938. Some commentators had thought that he might ignore the date, given that his reforms approved by Congress in December 2013 reopen Mexico’s oil sector to foreign investors.
Speaking at an event in Tabasco, Peña Nieto defended his reforms, while stressing that the state-run oil company Pemex will remain in Mexican hands.
“On this memorable date, once more, I tell you with total certainty, Pemex is, and will remain part of the patrimony of all Mexicans.” 
The president added that the reforms would provoke the “most important economic change of the next 50 years.”
Opponents of the energy upheaval held protests across the country. In Mexico City, at the tomb of President Lazaro Cardenas, his son Cuauthemoc Cardenas condemned the president’s actions as undemocratic, noting that six million Mexicans had signed a petition calling for a referendum on the issue. Meanwhile, the left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) slammed last year’s ruling by the Supreme Court rejecting their attempt to hold a national referendum on the reforms.
In another protest in the capital, a group of dissident Pemex workers argued that the privatization of the country’s oil industry would lead to dramatic cuts in public spending due to lost government income.
“The profits that were once gained will no longer be channeled into the country’s social projects,” one protesting worker noted.
However, Peña Nieto has pointed out that modern Mexico is more diversified and much less dependant on revenue from its oil exports than in the past. In addition, the federal government can expect to recoup a certain amount of lost revenue when it begins the task of issuing production-sharing contracts and licenses to multinational energy companies looking to develop the deepwater reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as shale deposits in northern Mexico.
History
Seventeen foreign companies lost their rights to Mexican oil when President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized all of their machinery, wells and refineries. Labor unrest was partly responsible for the move, as Mexican workers were demanding better pay and conditions. The nationalization of the industry sparked an international boycott of Mexican products in subsequent years, organized by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.