MEXICO CITY (AP) — EDITOR’S NOTE:

Mexico took control of its most precious natural resource by seizing the oil sector from U.S. companies in a move that’s taught starting in first grade today and celebrated each year as a great patriotic victory.

The woman holding a double-digit lead in the June 2 election to replace President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is an environmental engineer who helped produce the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. She’s also been a faithful protege of López Obrador, who hails from the oil industry’s Gulf of Mexico heartland and led a 2008 fight against energy reform.

The AP is making available its story from March 18, 1938, reporting the expropriation of foreign oil companies.

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MEXICO SEIZES U.S., BRITISH OIL INTERESTS

President Lazaro Cardenas tonight announced expropriation by the government of foreign oil companies operating in Mexico.