Benito Juárez
Benito Pablo Juárez García was a Mexican politician, military officer, and lawyer who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in 1872. A Zapotec, he was the first Indigenous president of Mexico and the first democratically elected Indigenous president in postcolonial Latin America. A member of the Liberal Party, he previously held a number of offices, including the governorship of Oaxaca and the presidency of the Supreme Court. During his presidency, he led the Liberals to victory in the Reform War and in the Second French intervention in Mexico.
Born in Oaxaca to a poor rural Indigenous family and orphaned as a child, Juárez passed into the care of his uncle, eventually moving to Oaxaca City at the age of 12, where he found work as a domestic servant. Sponsored by his employer, who was also a lay Franciscan, Juárez temporarily enrolled in a seminary and studied to become a priest, but later switched his studies to law at the Institute of Sciences and Arts, where he became active in liberal politics. He began to practice law and was eventually appointed as a judge, after which he married Margarita Maza, a woman from a socially distinguished family in Oaxaca City.
Juárez was eventually elected governor of Oaxaca and became involved in national politics following the ousting and exile of Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Plan of Ayutla. The new president, Juan Álvarez, appointed a liberal cabinet that included Juárez as Minister of Justice.
He was instrumental in passing the Juárez Law as part of the broader program of constitutional reforms known as La Reforma. Later, as the head of the Supreme Court, he succeeded to the presidency upon the resignation of the Liberal president Ignacio Comonfort in the early weeks of the Reform War between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, and led the Liberal Party to victory after three years of warfare.
Almost immediately after the Reform War had ended, President Juárez was faced with a French invasion, the Second French Intervention aimed at overthrowing the government of the Mexican Republic and replacing it with a French-aligned monarchy, the Second Mexican Empire. The French soon gained the collaboration of the Conservative Party, which aimed at returning themselves to power after their defeat in the Reform War, but Juárez continued to lead the government and armed forces of the Mexican Republic, even as he was forced by the advances of the French to flee to the north of the country. The Second Mexican Empire would finally collapse in 1867 after the departure of the last French troops two months previously and President Juárez returned to Mexico City, where he continued as president, but with growing opposition from fellow Liberals who believed he was becoming autocratic, until his death due to a heart attack in 1872.
During his presidency, he supported many controversial measures, including his negotiation of the McLane–Ocampo Treaty, which would have granted the United States perpetual extraterritorial rights across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; a decree extending his presidential term for the duration of French Intervention; his proposal to revise the liberal Constitution of 1857 to strengthen the power of the federal government; and his decision to run for reelection in 1871. His opponent, liberal general and fellow Oaxacan Porfirio Díaz, opposed his re-election and rebelled against Juárez in the Plan de la Noria.
After his death, the city of Oaxaca added "de Juárez" to its name in his honor, and numerous other places and institutions have been named after him. He is the only individual whose birthday is celebrated as a national public and patriotic holiday in Mexico. Many cities, streets, institutions, and other locations are named after him. He is considered the most popular Mexican president of the 19th century.
Early life and education
Benito Juárez was born on 21 March 1806, in the village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range since named for him, the Sierra Juárez. It was a small settlement of about two hundred inhabitants, made up of straw huts, and a small church, the village being located at the edge of a mountain pond known for its picturesque transparent waters and called La Laguna Encantada, the enchanted pond.His parents, Brígida García and Marcelino Juárez, were Zapotec peasants. He described his parents as "Indians from the primitive race of the country". He had two older sisters, Josefa and Rosa. Juárez became an orphan at the age of 3. His grandparents also died shortly after, and Juárez was raised by his uncle Bernardino Juárez.
Juárez worked in the cornfields and as a shepherd until the age of 12. Up until then Juárez had also been illiterate and could not speak Spanish, knowing then only his first language, Zapotec. However, his sister had previously moved to the city of Oaxaca for work, and that year Juárez moved to the city to attend school. There he took a job as a domestic servant in the household of Antonio Maza, where his sister worked as a cook.
In 1818, while the Mexican War of Independence was ongoing, a 12-year-old Juárez entered domestic service under the lay Franciscan and bookbinder Antonio Salanueva. The young boy showed potential at primary school, upon which Salanueva sought to sponsor Juárez to enter a seminary to study for the priesthood.
Juárez entered the seminary in Spring of 1821, only a few months before Mexico won its independence in September of the same year. He continued his theological studies for six years but eventually decided that he was not interested in the priesthood. An Institute of Arts and Sciences had been founded by the Oaxacan state legislature in 1826, and Juárez transferred there in 1827. In 1829, Juárez was appointed a teacher of physics. In 1831, Juárez accepted the post of Regidor del Ayuntamiento, or judicial secretary to the municipal council of Oaxaca City. In 1832, he graduated from the Institute of Arts and Sciences with a law degree. He was eventually admitted to the bar on 13 January 1834.
Early political career
Legal career
From the very beginning of his legal career, Juárez became an active partisan of the Liberal Party. As a lawyer, Juárez took cases of Indigenous villagers. Community members of Loxicha, Oaxaca hired him for their denunciation of a priest, whom they accused of abuses. He did not win the case, and was thrown into jail along with community members, "thanks to the collusion between Church and the state," writing later that it "strengthened in me the goal of working constantly to destroy the pernicious power of the privileged classes." Juárez took on the goal of fighting for equality before the law in the face of the lingering legal privileges that remained in Mexico from the colonial legal system, as were accorded to the Mexican Catholic Church, the army, and Indigenous communities. He became a prosecutor for the State of Oaxaca and was soon elected to the Oaxaca state legislature in 1832, serving for two years during the Liberal presidency of Valentín Gómez Farías.A Conservative Party coup led by Santa Anna overthrew the presidency of Gomez Farias in 1834. As part of the constitutional reorganization involved in the subsequent transition from the First Mexican Republic to the Centralist Republic of Mexico, Oaxaca became a department controlled by Mexico City and the state legislature of Oaxaca was dissolved. Juárez protested the dissolution of local government that was being imposed upon Oaxaca and, in fact, the rest of Mexico, as part of the transition to the Centralist Republic of Mexico in which the states of the nation were replaced by departments directly administered by Mexico City. For this, Juárez was briefly imprisoned, but he was shortly released. Juárez then returned to private practice. After practicing law for several years, in 1842 the Liberal governor of Oaxaca, Antonio León, appointed Juárez to serve as a Civil and Revenue Judge for the state of Oaxaca, a position which he held until 1846.
Governor of Oaxaca
The Centralist Republic itself would be overthrown in 1846 at the beginning of the Mexican American War and Oaxaca regained its federal autonomy, its executive now led by a triumvirate which included Juárez. He was subsequently elected to the national congress as a deputy for Oaxaca. Juárez supported President Farías, who had returned to power. There was a revolt against the state of Oaxaca during this time, causing Juárez to abandon his congressional post and return to Oaxaca to try to maintain order.In November 1847, he assumed the governorship. When Santa Anna, disgraced by his loss in the Mexican-American War, fell from power, Governor Juárez did not allow the ex-president to establish himself in Oaxaca, which gained for him the future enmity of Santa Anna. Juárez was faced with chaos in the state finances, the state justice department, and the state police organization. Juárez proceeded to carry out a program of economic improvements which included an elimination of the state deficit, the construction of roads and bridges, and the development of education. Governor Juárez also prepared and published a Civil and Penal Code. Oaxaca became a model state, and Juárez gained fame throughout the nation as an able administrator.
Upon finishing his one term permitted by the state constitution, Juárez became the director of the Oaxaca Institute of Science and Arts, where he had previously studied law and also taught science. Juárez also continued his practice of law.
Exile in New Orleans
Mexico experienced relative peace and stability in the years immediately following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, through the moderate presidencies of José Joaquín de Herrera and Mariano Arista, but in 1852 a Conservative coup overthrew Arista, and brought back Santa Anna for what would end up being his final dictatorship.Juárez fell victim to the restored Santa Anna, and the authorities confined him to the fortress of San Juan de Ullua. He was eventually released and exiled to Havana, from which he then traveled to New Orleans. There he found a day job as a cigar maker in one of the city's factories, while his wife remained in Mexico with their children, and were looked after by Liberal partisans. His time as governor of Oaxaca had not left him with a vast fortune, and he survived off of his cigar rolling job and funds sent to him from Mexico by his wife.
Juárez met other Liberal exiles in New Orleans, including the anti-clerical former governor of Michoacan Melchor Ocampo, and the Cuban separatist exile,, who later married Juárez's oldest daughter, and served as a valuable ally during the Reform War and the second French intervention
As a revolt against Santa Anna inspired by the Liberal Plan of Ayutla broke out in March 1855, Juárez sought to return to Mexico. He arrived at the port of Acapulco near the Southern center of the revolt in the summer of 1855. Santa Anna fled the nation and a subsequent Liberal assembly elected Juan Alvarez as the new president. Juárez, who had been secretary to the assembly, was made Minister of Justice and Religion.