second time the following year. In both cases, however, the unions returned under orders to accept unity at any cost as part of the party's Popular Front policy. Lombardo Toledano was never, as far as it is possible to determine, a member of the PCM. However, he had even stronger support from the Soviet Union during the Popular Front era than the nominal leaders of the PCM. Following the policy of that era, he and the CTM supported the Cárdenas administration enthusiastically, intervening to moderate union demands during the railroad workers' and electrical workers' strikes in 1936 and then the petroleum workers' strike in 1937. Lombardo Toledano and the CTM were vocal supporters for Cárdenas' nationalization of the oil industry in 1938. Lombardo Toledano also formed the Confederación de Trabajadores de América Latina in 1938. John L. Lewis from the Congress of Industrial Organizations attended its founding. The U.S. American Federation of Labor boycotted it. Fall from power Manuel Ávila Camacho, a protégé of and successor to Cárdenas, was more conservative. He engineered Fidel Velázquez's appointment as head of the CTM when Lombardo Toledano did not stand for reelection in 1941. Lombardo Toledano remained influential in the CTM, pursuing a course of support for the war effort and opposition to strikes when Mexico entered the war against Hitler. Lombardo Toledano soon fell out with both the CTM and the government. Although the CTM had (along with the CGT, CROM and the electrical workers union) formally aligned in 1938 with the precursor to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM), Lombardo Toledano concluded that the PRI (now led by Miguel Alemán Valdés) was too conservative and formed his own party to run against it, the Partido Popular. The Partido Popular never achieved more than fringe party status, and it was renamed the Partido Popular Socialista in 1960. The CTM refused to support Lombardo Toledano's new party, and Fidel Velázquez formally expelled Lombardo Toledano from the CTM in 1948. Lombardo Toledano left the union, but only after delivering a bitter denunciation of those who had brought about his downfall. He referred to himself in the first person ("yo") sixty-four times in that speech — a fact noted by some newspapers, who proceeded to nickname him the "Yo-yo Champion". Lombardo Toledano launched two publications (a magazine called América Latina and a daily named El Popular) while continuing to publish