Between 1940 and 1970, the Mexican state led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) undertook an economic project of unprecedented urban and industrial expansion that required strong social support and legitimacy to succeed. Urban and industrial growth demanded high levels of political stability, middle-class support, cheap labor and raw materials. The PRI´s revolutionary legacy became a matter of rhetoric, and by means of corporatism the party sought to exert major control upon workers and peasants. Meanwhile, the PRI-led state offered the Mexican middle class leadership in the party by means of the National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP), where the middle class found a corporatist haven. However, as the state courted the middle class, it was forced to hold contradictory visions seeking to satisfy the very paradoxical middle class. The middle class integrated a diversity of cultural, political and economic visions ranging from liberalism to conservatism.