agriculture. The Cárdenas alliance with peasant groups has been credited with the destruction of the hacienda system. Cárdenas distributed more land than all his revolutionary predecessors put together, a 400% increase. Cárdenas wanted the peasantry tied to the Mexican state and did so by organizing peasant leagues that collectively represented the peasantry, the National Confederation of Peasants (CNC), within the new, sectoral party structure that Cárdenas created within the Party of the Mexican Revolution. During his administration, he redistributed of land, of which were expropriated from U.S. nationals who 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. End of land reform, 1940-present Starting the government of Miguel Alemán (1946–52), land reform steps made in previous governments were rolled back. Alemán's government allowed entrepreneurs to rent peasant land. This created phenomenon known as "neolatifundismo," where land owners build up large-scale private farms on the basis of controlling land which remains ejidal but is not cultivated by the peasants to whom it is assigned. Echeverría's populist land reform In 1970, President Luis Echeverría began his term by declaring land reform dead. In the face of peasant revolt, he was forced to backtrack, and embarked on the biggest land reform program since Cárdenas. Echeverría legalized take-overs of huge foreign-owned private farms, which were turned into new collective ejidos. Land reform from 1991 to present In 1988, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was elected. In December 1991, he amended Article 27 of the Constitution, making it legal to sell ejido land and allow peasants to put up their land as collateral for a loan. Neverthess, land regulation is still permitted in Mexico by Article 27. See also Index of Mexico-related articles Economic history of Mexico Ejido Mexican Revolution Foreign relations of Mexico References Further reading Albertus, Michael, et al. "Authoritarian survival and poverty traps: Land reform in Mexico." World Development 77 (2016): 154–170. Bazant, Jan. The Alienation of Church Wealth in Mexico. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1971. De Janvry, Alain, and Lynn Ground. "Types and consequences of land reform in Latin America." Latin American Perspectives 5.4 (1978): 90–112. Dwyer, John J. The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press 2008. Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University