Vicente Lombardo Toledano - Early Career

Early Career

Lombardo Toledano was born in Teziutlán, Puebla, to middle-class parents. After obtaining his law degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1919, he pursued a master's degree in philosophy and letters there, and he began teaching at both the Popular University and at UNAM. He taught at UNAM until 1933 and it was there that he became a member of an informal group known as los siete sabios (the seven sages). It was while teaching there he helped organize a teachers' union. In 1921 he joined the Labor Party.

As leader of that teachers' union he entered the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), the largest and most powerful union confederation of the day and a key supporter of the regimes of Plutarco Elías Calles and Álvaro Obregón. Lombardo Toledano served as the house intellectual for CROM, not benefiting directly from its corruption, but acquiring access to power instead. Lombardo Toledano served as interim Governor of Puebla in 1923, was a councilman in the Federal District in 1924 to 1925 and was a congressional deputy from 1926 to 1928.

CROM lost most of its influence in 1928, after a right-wing Roman Catholic associated with the Cristero movement assassinated Obregón. Lombardo Toledano left CROM and the Labor Party in 1932. He had organized a faction called "Purified CROM" that left the CROM en masse in 1932, which left the CROM representing only a few unions in the textile industry. The Purified CROM became the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) in 1936, allying with the populist President Lázaro Cárdenas and the ruling Party of the Mexican Revoluion (PRM), a rival to the Labor Party associated with CROM. Lombardo Toledano was the secretary general of the CTM from 1936 to 1940.