Mexico and International Monetary Fund

In June 1945, Mexico became an original member of the United Nations. In 1946 Miguel Aleman Valdes succeeded Ávila as president, having been elected on a platform calling for a more equitable distribution of wealth, extensive irrigation works, and further industrialization of Mexico. Alemán continued close relations with the United States. In 1947 the Export-Import Bank lent Mexico $50 million to be expended on public works and industrial development. Later that year the Mexican government announced that British and Dutch oil companies, claimants of $250 million for expropriated properties, had settled for $21 million. In 1948 the government, striving to reverse the unfavorable balance of trade, devalued the peso. Imports not essential for industrial development were sharply restricted. In March 1949, for the first time since the expropriations of 1938, two U.S. petroleum companies were permitted to drill for oil, under the supervision of Pemex. The government stabilized the peso in June with the aid of loans from the Treasury of the United States and the International Monetary Fund. National elections were held on July 3, 1949, and the government party, renamed the Institutional Revolutionary party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI), won overwhelmingly in the Chamber of Deputies.