March 21: Birth of Benito Juárez

Benito Pablo Juárez García "Meritorious of the Americas"

San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca - March 21, 1806

Mexico DF. - July 18, 1872

"Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace."

Mexican lawyer and politician, of indigenous Zapotec origin. He could read texts in Latin, French and English in addition to the fact that he knew canon law and civil law. He was President of Mexico for fourteen years (1858-1872) and is the first and only indigenous President that Mexico has had.

He is awarded the title of "Meritorious of the Americas" for his perseverance in the fight for the freedoms of the people and the homeland, as well as for his defense of freedom.

Benito Juárez lived at the time of the consolidation of the nation as a Republic, being the most important of the historical period of Mexico known as "La Reforma" and marked a watershed in history national.

* Juárez enters the Seminary of the City with the support of the clergyman Salanueva whom he in the future considers as his godfather. * He leaves the seminary and decides to study law, entering the Institute of Sciences and Arts of Oaxaca, where he obtained a degree in 1834.

* After graduating as a lawyer, he worked for some time defending indigenous communities.

* Since 1830 Benito Juárez has held a series of positions both at the Institute where he studies and at the Court of Justice of the State of Oaxaca, in the Legislature, in the Civic Militia Battalion, in the Superior Court of Justice, in the Health Board, in the Electoral Board, among others. * He marries Margarita Maza, adopted daughter of his former employer, Antonio Maza. At the time of the wedding, he was 37 and she was 17.

* He served as a bureaucrat to both the centralists and the Satanists.

* In 1844 he was awarded with the appointment of Prosecutor of the Oaxacan Supreme Court of Justice.

* In 1847 he is elected federal deputy. He was one of those who helped re-elect Santa Anna as president and Gómez Farías as vice president. He voted in favor of the loan that Gómez Farias requested from the Church in 1847 to finance the war against the United States. On January 15, he was initiated into the Freemasonry of the Mexican National Rite, adopting the Masonic name Guillermo Tell.

* In the same year he is appointed interim governor of Oaxaca, characterized by achieving economic balance and carrying out public works such as roads, the reconstruction of the Government Palace, the foundation of Normal Schools, drawing up a geographical map and the plan of the city of Oaxaca, doubling the number of schools from 50 to 100, he created the port of Huatulco and built a road from the capital to it, reducing the cost of various goods brought from Veracruz or Acapulco. He also reorganized the National Guard and left surpluses in the treasury. He installed a public desk so that anyone who requested it could speak with him regardless of his social or economic status. Juárez prevented the fugitive Santa Anna from entering Oaxaca, who had been fleeing the country's capital due to the US occupation.

* In 1853 Santa Anna, upon reaching the presidential seat for the eleventh time, took revenge on Juárez for having prevented him from entering the State, sending him to arrest, locking him in the jars of San Juan de Ulúa and shortly after sending him to Veracruz where he was shipped to the exile in Cuba. * Juárez arrives in Havana and moves to New Orleans, where he seeks the support of the local Masonic lodges. He meets Melchor Ocampo and other exiled or politically persecuted refugees from the dictator. All of them met in that city in secret to plan a coup against Santa Anna.

* In his exile, Juarez supports the Ayutla Plan and advises the Acapulco chief, Juan N. Álvarez, who manages to become provisional president, appointing Benito Juárez Minister of Justice and Public Instruction in 1855. * Issues the Juárez Law, officially "Law on the administration of Justice and organic of the courts of the Nation, the District and Territories", which he restricted the rights of the military and ecclesiastics and served for Ignacio Comonfort and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada to later separate the Church from the Condition. * In the period from 1855 to 1857, he was governor of Oaxaca, promulgating in his state the Constitution of 1857, later Minister of the Interior and President of the Supreme Court of Justice. In December, during the coup d'etat where Comonfort ignored the Constitution of 1857 and in which there were conflicts between conservatives who supported the church and liberals who had supported the Church-State separation, Juárez was arrested due to the doubts of the coup plotters about his position, since that Juárez never openly declared himself against or in favor of the conflict, ironically caused by the law that he himself had helped to establish the bases.

* In 1858 Comonfort asked Juárez for help, since no agreement had been reached and the government was becoming weaker and weaker. Juárez went to Guanajuato to request help from General Manuel Doblado (Governor of Guanajuato), but he, along with other governors, had already unknown to Comonfort and named Juárez himself as a substitute, while Zuloaga in Mexico City also rebelled against Comonfort and the liberals. This caused the War of the Three Years or War of the Reform.

* In 1858 Juárez became President of the Republic for the first time and had to flee through several states, including Panama, Havana and New Orleans escaping from Zuloaga who was supported by the army and the clergy, who had been affected by the laws promulgated by Comonfort, based on the Law Juárez.

* On July 12, 1859, Benito Juárez decreed the first of the reform norms: the “Law of Nationalization of Ecclesiastical Assets”.

* June 15, 1861 at the end of the Reform War with the triumph of the Liberals, he was constitutionally elected to continue in the Presidency.

* After the French invasion Juárez admirably supports his government against conservatives and French between 1863 and 1867 pilgrimage through Mexico and the United States. His children Toñito and Pepito die in New York, where Margarita settles when she leaves Mexico. * On July 15, 1867 he triumphantly returns to Mexico City, thanks to the support of the United States he succeeded in shooting Maximiliano, General Mejía and the young Macabeo, Miguel Miramón, in response to the intervention of Europe.

* Executed Maximiliano and Juárez having returned to Mexico City, he calls elections for his government to be legitimate, winning them on January 16, 1868.

* During this period, Juárez created two new offices, one for public instruction and one for development, expanding public education on a free and secular basis.

throughout the country with the construction of hundreds of schools (the population of Mexico was 7 million of which 5 were ignorant and poor. Only about 800,000 were literate. In order to obtain resources, Juárez dismissed 60 thousand soldiers (“Teachers for soldiers,” he said); he also asked to negotiate deferral of payment on foreign debt with some nations such as England. Regarding infrastructure, he wanted to finish the railway line from Veracruz to Mexico City (478 km of railroad with its respective bridges, tunnels and diversion of waters). Juárez would be able to install 5,000 km of telegraph in three years with the support of Mexican and foreign investors.

* Some 700 conservatives planned a conspiracy against Juárez, they met secretly in the Temple of San Andrés, which Juárez decided to demolish in 1868, thus dropping his popularity. "Telegraphs, schools, roads, the future and not the past is what Mexico needs," said Juárez.

* Porfirio Díaz reveals himself against Juárez and with the banner of non-reelection he encourages the uprising in various parts of the country. * On January 2, 1871, Margarita died, a victim of cancer.

* In July 1871 there would be elections, the candidates were Sebastián Lerdo, Porfirio Díaz and Benito Juárez, with Juárez being reelected with 5,837 votes. He is accused of electoral fraud. * Porfirio Díaz pronounces the Plan de la Noria where he does not know Juárez and calls to rise up against him. The "no reelection" was one of the main charges against Juárez, Porfirio accused him of being a dictator.

Juárez always fought for equality, freedom, legality and democracy, always in adverse situations and almost always with inferior forces.

Defending his ideals of freedom and led him down a difficult and dangerous path, however, he freed all the obstacles that were presented to him.

His ideals, laws, thoughts, struggles and concerns to achieve freedom and justice in Mexico remain in the conscience of this country and possibly America.