Back in 2004, I proposed to the writer Carlos Montemayor that we make a film about the expropriation of the oil industry. Why was I so interested? Because my father was a petroleum engineer. He emigrated from Russia to Mexico, searched for oil in the state of Tabasco for many years, and discovered the first oil field there. He was working for the Shell Oil Company. In Mexico, before the expropriation, it was called El Águila. So I came to understand from a very young age the importance of oil to the world economy. And in Mexico, that oil was in the hands of foreign companies. American, English, and Dutch. Shell, Standard Oil, Huasteca, and other companies — seventeen foreign companies were taking the oil out of Mexico. And Mexico was left with nothing, until the government of Lázaro Cárdenas arrived.

It was a leftist, nationalistic government — the last of the Mexican Revolution. And Cárdenas came to understand that the oil industry had to be expropriated. Thanks to that, Mexico became master of its energy and acquired an important degree of sovereignty. It was the culmination of the Revolution. So Carlos and I began writing a script. But it turned out to be a very complicated task.

A lot of research and interviews had to be done, analyzing all of the footage from the time. And when we finished writing the argument, it was a three-hundred-page tome — but a movie of an hour and a half can’t be more than ninety or a hundred pages. And at that time, there wasn’t the boom in television series like there is now. So it had to be a film. Unfortunately, at that moment Carlos passed away. So I had to narrow it down without losing the essence.

By then it was around 2010–12, and we were in the midst of neoliberal governments that now wanted to privatize the oil industry! Of course, they weren’t interested in such a film. So when I applied for financial support, they kept telling me: “Sorry. Next year.” Same thing from the private donors. Until I understood that they were never going finance the project. So I had to shelve it and focus on other things. I’m a filmmaker, after all.

Then, when the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador [AMLO] came to power, everything changed. He supported me, even allowing me to film inside the National Palace — its halls, gardens, his office, even the historic desk where Benito Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, [Francisco] Madero, and Pancho Villa had once sat. He let me film there for free, which saved me a fortune in recreating those settings. That allowed me to shoot the most essential parts of the film, including the expropriation scenes with General Francisco Mújica, a close adviser and the secretary of communications of public works at the time.

The film portrays their doubts and fears, the imminent world war, and their diplomatic interactions with the American government, particularly with [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s ambassador Josephus Daniels. After the expropriation, you see, we couldn’t find any buyers for our oil. There was a boycott. England was even threatening to invade to reclaim what they said we had stolen. Mexico had no choice but to sell to the Axis powers, even though we didn’t want to.

Eventually, Roosevelt understood the importance of Mexican oil and supported the expropriation. The US became our primary buyer, ending the need to deal with fascist regimes.

That contrast is historically accurate. Daniels was educated, intelligent, and understood Mexico. A worthy representative of the “good neighbor” policy, in short. Meanwhile, the oil executives — mostly Texans — were arrogant and dismissive. Their accents and cigar-smoking were true to the era and to their social status.

There was a formative moment early in Cárdenas’s career when, as a young military official, he was sent to inspect one of the oil fields but was denied entry and insulted. That experience left a strong impression. General Mújica, too, pushed hard for the expropriation. He was a Marxist and to the left of Cárdenas. Together, they understood the opportunity that the advent of World War II offered. It was “now or never.”

In those days, there was a great deal of turmoil in the country, with pro-Cárdenas and anti-Cárdenas factions. In 1939, a new political party was founded — the PAN [Partido Acción Nacional, or National Action Party] —  on overtly fascistic principles. At one point, Cárdenas faced a rebellion from a former cabinet member and ex-general, Saturnino Cedillo. In that context, he came to feel that Mújica, who should have been his natural successor, was too radical and could provoke more uprisings and even jeopardize the expropriation. So he opted to go with a candidate, Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was seen to be more neutral. And, yes, who Roosevelt also liked. The idea was to calm the waters. And I think he regretted it later, because Camacho turned out to be not neutral but right-wing. And very corrupt.

No, because Cárdenas was shrewd enough to have himself named Secretary of War in the Camacho cabinet. So he retained control of the military. That allowed the new state company PEMEX to become powerful and institutionalized, bolstering Mexico’s economy for decades. There was a time when Mexico was growing some 6 percent a year, and when oil profits constituted half of the national revenue.

When you base a movie on a literary work, it’s a guarantee that it’s going to be interesting and important. My first full-length movie, Muñeca Reina (Queen Doll) is based on a story by Carlos Fuentes. I read it and thought: I can make a good movie out of this. The story is short, just six pages, and I made something much larger out of it. And when Carlos saw it, he said: “Sergio, your film is something else, but I like it.”

Of course: one thing is the story and another thing is the movie. They’re different things. Now, not everyone has always approved. My movie Llovizna (Drizzle) comes from a story by Juan de la Cabada. An even shorter one. And when Juan saw it, he was appalled. In his version, the protagonist, a businessman driving home at night, doesn’t wind up killing the indigenous hitchhikers he picks up along the way; in the movie, he does. And Juan said, “That isn’t my story.”

The same thing happened with Coronación (Coronation), which is an adaptation of a novel by the Chilean author José Donoso. And when José saw it he couldn’t stand the fact that it was set in Mexico and not Chile. Writers are very particular: they want the movie to follow exactly what they write.

In other cases, my movies have been inspired by historical or real-life incidents. La Casa del Sur (The House in the South) is based on President Porfirio Díaz’s displacement of the Yaqui people from the north to the Yucatán Peninsula, like slaves. From the arid, desert north to the water and swamps of the south. In that case, I wrote an original screenplay.

It has a long way to go. Whereas in the United States racism manifests as race-against-race conflict, in Mexico it is the imposition of the conqueror over the conquered. And although formal slavery is gone, the indigenous population remains so impoverished it is effectively so. A poor person coming from an indigenous community has no chance. With the Fourth Transformation, things are changing little by little, but it’s going to take a long time. Because this state of affairs goes to the origin of our society.

In Mexican cinema, neoliberalism continues to rule the roost. And I don’t know if it’s been an error or simply carelessness on the part of López Obrador’s and Claudia Sheinbaum’s governments, but they haven’t grasped the importance of cinema and its power to change consciences. You can see a sixty-episode series and forget it the next day. But a strong movie changes you.

In Cuba, the day after the revolution they began making movies. And in somewhere as different as the UK, Ken Loach’s films can be seen anywhere in the world and be understood. They’re universal. And that’s why I believe that 1938, although it is about a Mexican historical issue, can resonate with people in other countries who have gone through similar struggles.

But in regards to Mexican cinema, the whole system has to be overhauled. The Mexican state must take cinema into its own hands and promote it — build movie theaters for a different kind of cinema, a social cinema, and produce and finance these types of films. Thinking is also entertaining, isn’t it? How did we ever get to the idea that thinking is boring?