Benito Juárez

Benito Juárez (born March 21, 1806, San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, Mexico—died July 18, 1872, Mexico City) was a national hero and president of Mexico (1861–72), who for three years (1864–67) fought against foreign occupation under the emperor Maximilian and who sought constitutional reforms to create a democratic federal republic.

Early career

Juárez was born of Mesoamerican Indian parents, both of whom died when he was three years old. When he was 12, he left the uncle who was caring for him and joined his sister in the city of Oaxaca, where he began his formal education.

He originally studied for the priesthood, but in 1829 he entered the Oaxaca Institute of Arts and Sciences (1827; now Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca) to study law and science. In 1831 he received a law degree and won his first public office, a seat on the municipal council. Impeccably honest, he never used public office for personal gain, and his modest way of life reflected his simple tastes, even after his marriage in 1843 to Margarita Maza, a Oaxacan woman 17 years his junior. Politics soon became his life’s work: he was a member of both the state and national legislatures, he became a judge in 1841, and he served as governor of his state, a post that brought him into national prominence.

During his early years in politics, Juárez began to formulate liberal solutions for his country’s many problems. The road to economic health, he concluded, lay in substituting capitalism for the stifling economic monopoly held by the Roman Catholic Church and the landed aristocracy. He also believed that political stability could be achieved only through the adoption of a constitutional form of government based on a federal system.

The conservatives’ return to power in the elections of 1853, however, doomed any reform in the near term in Mexico. Many prominent liberals were exiled, including Juárez. From December 1853 until June 1855 he lived in New Orleans in semipoverty, occupying himself by exchanging ideas with other Mexicans and laying plans to return home. The opportunity to put his ideas into action finally came in 1855, when the liberals took control of the national government, and Juárez left the United States to join the new administration of Juan Álvarez as minister of justice and public instruction.

The liberals carried out three major reforms, all supported by Juárez. As minister of justice, he was responsible for the law bearing his name that abolished special courts for the clergy and military, for he felt that juridical equality would help promote social equality. In June 1856 the government published the Ley Lerdo (“Lerdo Law,” named for the minister of finance). Although it forced the church to sell its property, it contained no threat of confiscation. By breaking up large landed estates, the government hoped that many Mexicans would be able to acquire property and thus create the middle class that it believed was essential for a strong and stable Mexico. The climax of the reform was the liberal constitution promulgated in February 1857.

In the same year, Ignacio Comonfort was elected president, and the new Congress chose Juárez to preside over the Supreme Court and therefore, according to the constitution, also to serve as the effective vice president of Mexico. The court position was critical in determining his future career, for when the conservatives revolted and ousted Comonfort in January 1858, Juárez had a legal claim to the presidency. Lacking troops to control the area around Mexico City, however, he retired to the eastern port city of Veracruz.

At Veracruz Juárez faced serious difficulties, for he had to create a government and hold it together through quarrels, betrayals, and defeat; to enforce and implement the constitution; and to maintain armies in the field and defeat the conservative forces. He was an extraordinarily tenacious and self-sufficient man, however, able to concentrate his energy and interest, and he proved himself the master of his government.

Because the clergy was supporting the conservatives against the legal government, Juárez enacted several laws to curb ecclesiastical power. He nationalized all church property, exempting only those buildings actually used for worship and instruction. To weaken clerical influence still further, he also nationalized the cemeteries and put birth registrations and marriages under the civil authority. Finally, the government separated church and state and guaranteed religious liberty to all citizens.

Presidency

By late 1860 the conservatives were faltering, and in January 1861 Juárez was able to return to Mexico City and was constitutionally elected president. He was, however, faced with many serious problems: the opposition’s forces still remained intact, the new Congress distrusted its president, and the treasury was virtually empty. As a solution to the latter problem, Juárez decided in July 1861 to suspend payment on all foreign debts for two years. England, Spain, and France decided to intervene to safeguard their investments, and by January 1862 the three countries had landed troops at Veracruz. However, when Britain and Spain realized that Napoleon III intended to conquer Mexico and control it through a puppet, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, they withdrew their forces. The French suffered a major defeat at Puebla on May 5, 1862, but with reinforcements they were able to occupy Mexico City in June 1863, and Maximilian soon arrived to take control of the government.

Forced to leave the capital again, Juárez kept himself and his government alive by a long series of retreats that ended only at El Paso del Norte (later named Juárez) at the Mexican-U.S. border. Early in 1867, as a result of continued Mexican resistance, increased U.S. pressure, and criticism at home, Napoleon decided to withdraw his troops. Soon afterward Mexican forces captured Maximilian and executed him.

Juárez then made the greatest mistake of his political career. In August 1867, shortly after his return to Mexico City, he issued a call for national elections and for a referendum on whether Congress should make five amendments to the constitution. Public opinion did not object to the president’s running for reelection, but the constitutional changes aroused immediate and violent reaction in many quarters, including those sympathetic to Juárez. His proposed changes came under fire because amendments enacted by Congress alone were unconstitutional, and the changes would strengthen the executive power. Juárez was reelected, but the controversy had created such a crisis of confidence that the administration did not even bother to count the votes on the amendments.

Despite illness and personal loss—in October 1870 Juárez suffered a stroke, and three months later his wife died—he decided to run again in 1871. After a bitter campaign he was reelected, but many of his countrymen, refusing to accept the result as final, took up arms against him. Juárez spent the last few months of his life trying to restore peace. He died of a heart attack in 1872 and was buried in the Pantheon of San Fernando in Mexico City.

Legacy

Juárez’s political rise was a continual struggle to transform his liberal ideas into a permanent political reality and to overcome the prevalent social attitudes toward his Indian background. The prejudices of the 19th century serve to emphasize and enhance Juárez’s extraordinary qualities and achievements. His domestic reforms set the stage for Mexico’s remarkable modernization in the last quarter of the 19th century and freed Mexico from the most-flagrant remnants of neocolonialism. His leadership against the French earned Juárez his place as a national hero.