Mexico's Peasant President: Benito Juárez

Mexico has often led the way in the radical history of the Americas. 
 
In the wars of independence against Spain, Mexicans mobilised the largest popular army in Latin America, led by the rebel priest Miguel Hidalgo. 
 
The Mexican Revolution of the 1910s was one of the great world revolutions of the twentieth century, enacting radical land reform under activists like Emiliano Zapata.
 
And in 1858, Mexico elected Benito Juárez, a Zapotec peasant from Oaxaca, as President of the Republic. 
 
He was the first indigenous head of state in modern history.

Juárez wasn’t just extraordinary because of his ethnic identity but because he led one of the most radical governments in nineteenth-century Latin America, and under the most challenging conditions. 
 
In a decade of rule, Juárez’s radical liberal government successfully defended its progressive policy program against a right-wing rebellion and then an imperial invasion by France.
 
Juárez’s was a defining regime of the modern Americas, proving that, with popular support, radical reforms could resist the forces of colonial reaction, domestic and foreign. 
 
Juárez was born on this day in 1806, in rural Oaxaca.

And given his background, you wouldn’t have guessed he’d grow up to be President of the Republic of Mexico.
 
For one thing, he was an indigenous Zapotec peasant in a racially hierarchical society dominated by white Europeans. 
 
For another thing, the Republic of Mexico didn’t even exist yet. The war of independence against Spain was fought from 1810 until 1821, while Juárez was still just a kid.

Until he was 12, Juárez was a rural labourer, working in the cornfields and as a shepherd. 
 
He then moved to Oaxaca City, finding work as a domestic servant for a bookbinder and eventually training as a lawyer, graduating in 1832. 
 
Meanwhile, Juárez developed a political position on the radical liberal left, opposing the institutionalised privileges of the Catholic Church and the Army, and defending the rights of Mexico’s indigenous peasant majority. 
 
These were turbulent times in Mexican politics: over three decades, Mexico experienced several right-wing coups and counter-coups, and a U.S. invasion in 1846.

Then, in 1857, the liberal national government enacted a radical new constitution which abolished the colonial privileges of the Church and the Army – including independent legal systems and enormous Church land ownership. 
 
Rather than accept the democratic settlement, the Mexican right-wing chose violence.
 
The sitting liberal president, lacking resolve, was inclined to surrender to the conservative intimidation campaign. Fortunately, Juárez was not.
 
Having built a regional base in Oaxaca and a national profile among the country’s progressives, Juárez assumed the Presidency of Mexico in January 1858, ready to fight to defend the new Constitution. 
 
But Juárez didn’t have long to settle in to his role.

Backed by senior army generals, right-wing rebels drove Juárez’s government out of Mexico City, after which he relocated to the liberal stronghold of Veracruz on the Atlantic coast. 
 
Over the next two years, Juárez withstood two sieges of Veracruz as the right-wing rebels, lacking a popular base, were gradually driven back across the rest of Mexico. 
 
In December 1860, the last rebel armies were dispersed and Juárez’s government retook the capital.
 
But no sooner was the democratic order restored than liberal Mexico was again in crisis. This time, because of a massive French invasion. Out of the frying pan…
 
In June 1861, Juárez had to suspend interest payments on Mexico’s foreign debt to avoid financial collapse.
 
Napoleon III, the charlatan Emperor of France, used this debt issue as a pretext to invade Mexico, overthrow the Republic, and install Maximilian of Habsburg as a puppet monarch.
 
An exiled fringe of Mexican monarchists had convinced Napoleon that royalism was popular among the Mexican people. 
 
But it was a complete lie. Even the Mexican right had accepted the republican settlement.
 
So, while the French enjoyed military superiority, Benito Juárez could again rely on the Mexican masses.

The French invaded Mexico’s Gulf coast in 1862, and although Juárez’s republican government had to evacuate Mexico City to escape capture, he was able to form a pilgrim administration, roaming between free cities in the north.
 
Meanwhile, republican armies and guerrillas kept the French occupier tied down elsewhere in the country, giving Juárez room to breathe. 
 
In five years of attempting to rule Mexico, the French puppet regime never controlled the whole country. 
 
Meanwhile, across the northern border, the United States had its own revolutionary leadership in Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery government during the Civil War.
 
After crushing the pro-slavery rebels in 1865, the United States government sent much-needed weapons to Juárez in an act of republican solidarity.
 
Washington even threatened Napoleon III with war if he didn’t leave the Americas.
 
Seeing the game was up, the French evacuated Mexico in early 1867. The puppet monarchy of Maximilian instantly collapsed, and Juárez liberated Mexico again.
 
Benito Juárez, an indigenous peasant from Oaxaca, had now led not one but two of the great progressive victories in Mexican radical history.