36.1: Mexico

36.1.1: The Porfiriato

Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori was a Mexican soldier and politician, a veteran of the Reform War and the French intervention in Mexico. As president, he served seven terms in office for a total of 35 years (1876 to 1911). The period during which he and his allies ruled the country became known as the Porfiriato.

Porfirio Diaz: Diaz served as president of Mexico for 35 years.

The Campaign of “No Re-election”

In 1870, Diaz ran against President Juarez and Vice President Lerdo de Tejada for president. Juarez won in July and was confirmed by Congress in October, but Diaz claimed the election was fraudulent. Diaz launched the Plan de la Noria, a revolutionary call to arms with the intent of ousting Mexican President Benito Juarez on November 8, 1871. The plan was supported by a number of local rebellions throughout the country, but ultimately failed. Juarez died while in office in 1872, and when Vice President Lerdo succeeded him to the presidency, he offered amnesty to the rebels, which Diaz accepted. Subsequently, Diaz took up residency in Veracruz and served as the region’s representative in the legislature.

Over time, opposition to Lerdo’s presidency grew as anticlerical sentiment and labor unrest increased, and Diaz saw an opportunity to plot a more successful rebellion. As a result, he left Mexico in 1875 for New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas, with his political ally Manuel Gonzalez. A year later, he issued the Plan of Tuxtepec as a call to arms against Lerdo, who was running for another presidential term. Lerdo was re-elected in July 1876, but continued rebellion and political unrest before and after the election forced him out of office. In November, Diaz occupied Mexico City and Lerdo was exiled to New York. General Juan Mendez was named provisional president, but Diaz was elected to the office in the beginning of 1877. One of Diaz’s government’s first actions was to amend the 1857 liberal constitution to prevent re-election to the presidency.

Diaz initially served only one term in office in light of his past resistance to Lerdo’s re-election policy. In order to side-step the convention, he handpicked his successor, Manuel Gonzalez, with the intention of maintaining his power in everything but name. During the four-year period of Gonzalez’s rule, corruption and official incompetence abounded, so when Diaz ran for office again in 1884, he was greeted with open arms by the public. At that point, very few people remembered the “no re-election” promise that had characterized his previous campaign, though some underground political papers reversed his previous slogan, “Sufragio Efective, No Reeleccion”, to “Sufragio Efectivo No, Reeleccion”. During his second term, Diaz amended the constitution twice, initially allowing for two terms in office, then removing all restrictions on re-election.

Political Career

As a popular military hero and astute politician, Diaz determined that his main goal as president was to create the internal order necessary to foster economic development throughout the country. His eventual establishment of peace, termed the Pax Porfiriana, became one of his crowning achievements. To achieve this goal, Diaz created a systematic and methodical regime with a staunch military mindset. He dissolved all local and federal-level authorities that had once existed in order to ensure that all leadership stemmed from his office. Legislative authorities that remained within Mexico were stacked almost entirely with his closest and most loyal allies. Diaz also suppressed the media and controlled the Mexican court system.

Diaz developed many pragmatic and personalist approaches to the political conflicts that occurred during his first term in office. Although known for standing with radical liberals, he made sure not to come across as a liberal ideologue while in office and maintained control of his political allies via generous systems of patronage. He was skilled at catering to interest groups and playing them off of one another to create the illusion of democracy and quell rebellions before unrest began. He maintained the structure of elections so that a facade of liberal democracy remained during his rule, but his administration became famous for their suppression of civil society and public revolts. He also paid the US $300,000 in settlement claims to secure recognition of his regime and met with Ulysses S. Grant in 1878 while the latter visited Mexico.

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On February 17, 1908, Diaz gave an interview with an American journalist, James Creelman of Pearson’s Magazine, in which he stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and elections. Diaz also stated that he would retire and allow other candidates to compete for the presidency. Immediately, opposition groups began the search for suitable candidates. As candidates began to campaign, Diaz decided he was not going to retire, but instead run against a candidate he deemed appropriate. He chose Francisco Madero, an aristocratic but democratically leaning reformer. Madero was a landowner and very similar ideologically to Diaz, but hoped for other Mexican elites to rule alongside the president. Ultimately, Diaz had Madero jailed during the election.

Despite this, Madero gained substantial popular support. However, when the results were announced, Diaz was proclaimed re-elected almost unanimously in a massive display of electoral fraud, arousing widespread anger throughout the country. Madero called for revolt against Diaz and the Mexican Revolution began. Diaz was forced from office and fled the country for Spain on May 31, 1911.

Attributions

• • The Porfiriato
    • “Plan de la Noria.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_de_la_Noria. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Porfirio Diaz.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Porfirio_Diaz.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Porfirio_Diaz.jpg. Wikimedia Commons GNU FDL 1.2.