Porfirio Díaz

Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico for thirty-four years, modernised it, and left it to a revolution that killed perhaps a million people. Born in Oaxaca in 1830 to a modest family of partly Mixtec descent, he trained for the priesthood, switched to law, and joined the liberal side in the wars of the Reform under Juárez. He was a genuinely distinguished soldier: he fought the French intervention throughout, was captured twice and escaped twice, and commanded at the defence of Puebla on 5 May 1862, the victory that Mexico still celebrates. He then revolted twice against elected governments — losing in 1871 and winning in 1876 — under a slogan calling for no re-election, which is the promise he spent the rest of his life breaking. The Porfiriato is the standard case study in growth without distribution. Railway mileage went from a few hundred kilometres to some 19,000, foreign capital built mines, oil fields and textile mills, the budget was balanced for the first time, and order was enforced by the rurales on a policy summarised as bread or the stick. The cost was the countryside. Survey companies were paid in land and dispossessed village communities across the country, so that by 1910 a few thousand families held most of the arable land and the great majority of rural Mexicans were landless labourers tied by debt. He told an American journalist in 1908 that Mexico was ready for democracy, then jailed his opponent and declared himself re-elected. He resigned in May 1911 and died in Paris in 1915.

• Lived: 1830 CE – 1915 CE
• Nationality: Mexican
• Roles: general, dictator, head_of_state, military_leader

Related

• World War I
• French Intervention in Mexico and the Second Mexican Empire
• The Mexican Revolution