If the rude men directly affected by the changes and processes of the ecology of oil responded by fashioning and nurturing a confrontational culture and politics, they were not alone. The national revolutionary leadership also expressed its discontent with the oil apparatus the moment the bullets started flying across the Huasteca. As soon as they could, the revolutionaries began building institutions and emitting decrees aimed at regulating the industry. An explicit ethic of conservation drove their efforts, but the weakness of the revolutionary state-in-formation and the strength of the oil companies thwarted them. Patently defeated by the mid-1920s, the revolutionaries nonetheless changed the terms of the debate. After 1921, foreign oil ceased to be associated with progress. A narrative of wasteland emerged in Mexican national discourse instead. It would remain dominant through the 1938 nationalization and into the present. Likewise, new agrarian policies born out of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution allowed the indigenes of the Huasteca to reemerge as actors to claim ownership of a radically changed landscape. The results of their efforts were more mixed, as the impetus for land reform ebbed and flowed with successive administrations. The Mexican government nevertheless continued trying to erode the power of the oil companies and reconfigure their practices into the late 1930s. Again, the efforts failed.