Porfirio Díaz

Porfirio Diaz, known for his long and autocratic rule of Mexico and his disdain for the poorer classes, was actually born into a lower-middle-class Spanish / Mixtec Indian family in Oaxaca. His father was a blacksmith and an innkeeper and died when Porfirio was only three years old. He was educated by the Catholic church in what was to be his preparation for entering the priesthood, but by age 16 Diaz realized he had no intention of becoming a priest. Many men of Oaxaca had joined the Mexican army to fight in the Mexican-American War of 1846, and at 18 Diaz did the same, but the war ended before he saw combat. He left the army and returned to Oaxaca to study law. There he became acquainted with Benito Juarez, the state's governor. The civil war of 1854 pitted Juarez and his liberal reformers against the dictatorship of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna--of "the Alamo" fame--and his supporters, mainly wealthy landowners and the Catholic Church. Diaz came out squarely on Juarez's side, and fled Oaxaca to join Juarez's revolutionary army. Diaz proved to be an able commander and defeated Santa Anna's forces in several key battles, earning a promotion to general. Juarez eventually triumphed and Santa Anna fled Mexico, but the victory didn't last long. Mexico was soon invaded by the French, on the pretext of collecting on loans from French bankers that Mexico couldn't pay. They overthrew Juarez and installed a member of the Hapsburg royal family as ruler, calling him Emperor Maximilian. Diaz again fought with Juarez against this French occupation, and upon Maximilian's overthrow and execution, Diaz resigned from the army and retired to Oaxaca. Juarez died and was succeeded by Sebastian Lerdo, whose administration was racked by internal squabbles, chaos and rebellions. Diaz was persuaded to lead a rebellion against Lerdo, and in 1876 Diaz's forces drove out Lerdo after defeating his army in several battles. Diaz took Mexico City and became president. At first his regime instituted many needed reforms, settled the national debt and embarked on an ambitious program to modernize the country, bringing railroads and telegraph services to many areas of Mexico that didn't have them. He was succeeded at the end of his term in 1880 by his former Minister of War, but ran for president in the 1884 election and won handily. However, his administration grew more repressive the longer it stayed in power, and eventually it became allied with the very forces it had once fought. Diaz wanted to bring foreign investment into the country, and to that end he instituted a controversial program of wholesale "evacuations" of the poor from the cities to the countryside, so that foreign investors and tourists wouldn't see them and would be more inclined to invest their money in Mexico. Eventually his autocratic rule and repressive policies resulted in a series of rebellions and uprisings, led by such legendary Mexican figures as Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza, among others. In 1913 these leaders combined their forces in a final assault on Mexico City, Diaz's seat of government, defeated his armies and forced him to flee the country. Ironically, although he came to power in Mexico largely because of his fight against the French, he wound up spending his exile in Paris, where he died in 1915.