Benito Pablo Juárez García (Latin American Spanish: [beˈnito ˈpaβlo ˈxwaɾes ɣaɾˈsi.a] ; 21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872) 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 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 (The Reform). 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 (21 March) is celebrated as a national public and patriotic holiday in Mexico. Many cities (most notably Ciudad Juárez), streets, institutions, and other locations are named after him. He is considered the most popular Mexican president of the 19th century.
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" (Spanish: indios de la raza primitiva del país). 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 the 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.
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.