Memory struggles over historical characters in contentious politics have often been framed as reputation struggles in which the valence of a character is disputed by adversarial groups. However, antagonist actors often invoke and appropriate the same revered character to endorse contradicting political goals. These struggles often revolve around a different dimension of the character’s memory: the significance of the character’s legacy. In this study, I examine three strategies employed to battle over the political legacy of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas. I introduce the term Legacy Work to explain how actors in contentious politics transform or preserve the meaning of political legacies and provide a sociological answer to the question “What would leaders of the past have us do today?”

在有争议的政治中，对历史人物的记忆斗争经常被描述为声誉斗争，在这种斗争中，一个人物的价值受到敌对团体的质疑。然而，反派演员经常援引并挪用同一个受人尊敬的角色来支持相互矛盾的政治目标。这些斗争通常围绕着角色记忆的不同维度：角色遗产的重要性。在这项研究中，我研究了为争夺墨西哥总统拉萨罗·卡德纳斯的政治遗产而采用的三种策略。我引入“遗产工作”一词来解释有争议的政治中的参与者如何转变或保留政治遗产的含义，并为“过去的领导人今天让我们做什么？”这个问题提供社会学的答案。