During the administration of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas (from 1934 to 1940), the long-neglected Tamaulipas border became the focus of intensive state investment. One architectural result was the construction of a substantial new Palacio Municipal (now the Palacio Federal) in Nuevo Laredo in 1940. Eduardo Alarcón Cantú has identified the architect as Alfonso Hurtado Serrano of Mexico City. The neocolonial design of the Palacio Municipal reflected the nationalism of the Cárdenas administration, which rebuffed U.S. models of modernity by formulating a state cultural policy to frame models of Mexican modernity.