José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori (; Spanish: [poɾˈfiɾjo ˈði.as]; baptized 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), commonly known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican army general and politician who was the president of Mexico from 1876 until his overthrow in 1911. Seizing power in a military coup, he served on three occasions, a total of over thirty years, the longest of any Mexican ruler. This period is known as the Porfiriato and has been called a de facto dictatorship.
Díaz was born to a Oaxacan family of modest means. He initially studied to become a priest but eventually switched his studies to law, and among his mentors was the future President of Mexico, Benito Juárez. Díaz increasingly became active in Liberal Party politics fighting with the Liberals to overthrow Santa Anna in the Plan of Ayutla, and also fighting on their side against the Conservative Party in the Reform War.
During the second French intervention in Mexico, Díaz fought in the Battle of Puebla in 1862, which temporarily repulsed the invaders, but was captured when the French besieged the city with reinforcements a year later. He escaped captivity and made his way to Oaxaca de Juárez, becoming political and military commander over all of Southern Mexico, and successfully resisting French efforts to advance upon the region, until Oaxaca City fell before a French siege in 1865. Díaz once more escaped captivity seven months later and rejoined the army of the Mexican Republic as the Second Mexican Empire disintegrated in the wake of the French departure. As Emperor Maximilian made a last stand in Querétaro, Díaz was in command of the forces that took back Mexico City in June 1867.
During the era of the Restored Republic, he subsequently revolted against presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada on the principle of no re-election. Díaz succeeded in seizing power, ousting Lerdo in a coup in 1876, with the help of his political supporters, and was elected in 1877. In 1880, he stepped down and his political ally Manuel González was elected president, serving from 1880 to 1884. In 1884, Díaz abandoned the idea of no re-election and held office continuously until 1911.
A controversial figure in Mexican history, Díaz's regime ended political instability and achieved growth after decades of economic stagnation. He and his allies comprised a group of technocrats known as científicos ("scientists"), whose economic policies benefited a circle of allies and foreign investors, helping hacendados consolidate large estates, often through violent means and legal abuse. These policies grew increasingly unpopular, resulting in civil repression and regional conflicts, as well as strikes and uprisings from labor and the peasantry, groups that did not share in Mexico's growth.
Despite public statements in 1908 favoring a return to democracy and not running again for office, Díaz reversed himself and ran in the 1910 election. Díaz, then 80 years old, failed to institutionalize presidential succession, triggering a political crisis between the científicos and the followers of General Bernardo Reyes, allied with the military and peripheral regions of Mexico. After Díaz declared himself the winner for an eighth term, his electoral opponent, wealthy estate owner Francisco I. Madero, issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí calling for armed rebellion against Díaz, leading to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. In May 1911, after the Federal Army suffered several defeats against the forces supporting Madero, Díaz resigned in the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.
Porfirio Díaz was the sixth of seven children, baptized on 15 September 1830, in the city of Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca but his exact date of birth is unknown. 15 September is an important date in Mexican history, the eve of Miguel Hidalgo's Grito de Dolores, which triggered the Mexican War of Independence in 1810. After Díaz became president, it would become customary to commemorate the Grito de Dolores on the eve of its anniversary.
Díaz's father, José Faustino Díaz Orozco, was a Criollo (a Mexican of predominantly Spanish ancestry). José Díaz was an illiterate dependiente, or workman employed by a firm of merchants. In 1808, he had married María Petrona Cecilia Mori Cortés, whose mother was Mixtec, and whose father could trace his ancestry from Asturias.
Eventually, José de la Cruz had saved enough to start planting agave, and he opened a wayside inn in Oaxaca City to sell the products of his business. José de la Cruz died in 1833 of cholera when Díaz was only three years old. Petrona Mori began to manage the inn while raising her multiple children.
The young Díaz was sent to primary school at the age of 6 and at one point was apprenticed to a carpenter. In 1845, at the age of fifteen, Díaz entered the Colegio Seminario Conciliar de Oaxaca, to study for the priesthood, sponsored by his godfather, José Agustín Domínguez, canon of and eventually Bishop of Oaxaca.
In 1846, the Mexican-American War broke out, and Díaz joined a Oaxacan military battalion. He practiced drills and attended lectures on tactics and strategy at the Institute of Arts and Sciences, but he never saw combat by the time the war ended in 1848.
By 1849, Díaz decided that he did not have a vocation to the priesthood and over the objections of his family decided to switch his studies to law. He gained the friendship of Don Marcos Pérez and Indigenous judge and professor of law at the Institute of Arts and Sciences through which Díaz also came to know his future colleague and president of Mexico, Benito Juárez who was at that time Governor of Oaxaca. Díaz passed his first examination in civil and canon law in 1853, at the age of 23.
In that same year however, a Conservative Party coup overthrew the Liberal government of Mariano Arista and raised Santa Anna for what would turn out to be his final dictatorship. Many prominent Liberals were expelled from the country, including Benito Juárez who found refuge in New Orleans. Don Marcos Pérez was arrested, but Díaz was able to communicate with him in prison with the help of Díaz's brother Félix.
In March 1854 the Plan of Ayutla broke out against Santa Anna led by the Liberal caudillo Juan Álvarez. After openly expressing support for Álvarez, Díaz was forced to flee Oaxaca and joined up with the Liberal partisan, Francisco Herrera. Authorities managed to attack and disperse Herrera's troops, and Díaz once more had to flee, but the Ayutla movement was increasingly growing in strength. When the Liberals captured the city of Oaxaca, Díaz was made subprefect of Ixtlan. As sub-prefect Díaz helped in an ill-fated effort to put down a barracks revolt in Oaxaca, but the Ayutla movement ultimately triumphed by August 1855, when Santa Anna resigned, subsequently fleeing the nation.
Juan Álvarez was elected president in October 1855 and his administration inaugurated what would come to be known as La Reforma an unprecedented attempt to pass through progressive constitutional reforms for Mexico culminating in the promulgation of the Constitution of 1857. Conservative Party resistance ended up triggering the outbreak of the Reform War in late 1857, at the same time when Díaz's old mentor, Benito Juarez became president. The Conservatives set up their rival government in opposition to Juarez and the Liberals.
Díaz at this time was still in Oaxaca. He had previously accepted a commission as captain in the National Guard in December 1856. As the Reform War broke out, he maintained his command in Ixtlan, until the Conservative General Marcelino Cobos defeated the Liberal forces in Oaxaca in January 1858. Díaz was shot in the leg and would not recover for four months.
Díaz rejoined the war and was present when Cobos was defeated in Xalapa in February 1858. Diaz was subsequently named Governor and Military Commandant of the district of Tehuantepec. He was given command over 150 men and tasked with raising funds and receiving arms imported from the United States. Díaz chose the coast town of Juchitán de Zaragoza as his headquarters and exercised his command for two years. For winning repeated victories against the Conservatives he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.