78 Facts About Porfirio Diaz

Veteran of the War of the Reform and the French intervention in Mexico, Diaz rose to the rank of general, leading republican troops against the French-imposed rule of Maximilian I He subsequently revolted against presidents Benito Juarez and Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada on the principle of no re-election.

In 1884 Porfirio Diaz abandoned the idea of no re-election and held office continuously until 1911.

Controversial figure in Mexican history, Porfirio Diaz's regime ended political instability and achieved growth after decades of economic stagnation.

In May 1911, after the Federal Army suffered a number of defeats against the forces supporting Madero, Porfirio Diaz resigned in the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.

Porfirio Diaz was the sixth of seven children, baptized on 15 September 1830, in Oaxaca, Mexico, but his actual date of birth is unknown.

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Porfirio Diaz's father, Jose Porfirio Diaz, was a Criollo.

Porfirio Diaz's mother, Petrona Mori, was a mestizo woman, daughter of a man of Spanish background and an indigenous woman named Tecla Cortes.

The Porfirio Diaz family was devoutly religious, and Porfirio Diaz began training for the priesthood at the age of fifteen when his mother, Maria Petrona Mori Cortes, sent him to the Colegio Seminario Conciliar de Oaxaca.

Porfirio Diaz was offered a post as a priest in 1846, but national events intervened.

Porfirio Diaz joined with seminary students who volunteered as soldiers to repel the US invasion during the Mexican–American War, and, despite not seeing action, decided his future was in the military, not the priesthood.

Also in 1846, Porfirio Diaz came into contact with a leading Oaxaca liberal, Marcos Perez, who taught at the secular Institute of Arts and Sciences in Oaxaca.

That same year, Porfirio Diaz met Benito Juarez, who became governor of Oaxaca in 1847, a former student there.

In 1849, over the objections of his family, Porfirio Diaz abandoned his ecclesiastical career and entered the Instituto de Ciencias and studied law.

At this point, Porfirio Diaz had already aligned himself with radical liberals, such as Benito Juarez.

Juarez was forced into exile in New Orleans; Porfirio Diaz supported the liberal Plan de Ayutla that called for the ouster of Santa Anna.

Porfirio Diaz evaded an arrest warrant and fled to the mountains of northern Oaxaca, where he joined the rebellion of Juan Alvarez.

In 1855, Porfirio Diaz joined a band of liberal guerrillas who were fighting Santa Anna's government.

Porfirio Diaz escaped, and President Benito Juarez offered him the positions of secretary of defense or army commander in chief.

Porfirio Diaz declined both, but took an appointment as commander of the Central Army.

Porfirio Diaz escaped and fought the battles of Tehuitzingo, Piaxtla, Tulcingo and Comitlipa.

When Juarez returned to the presidency and began to restore peace, Porfirio Diaz resigned his military command and went home to Oaxaca.

However, it was not long before Porfirio Diaz was openly opposed to the Juarez administration, since Juarez held onto the presidency.

Porfirio Diaz challenged the civilian Juarez, who was running for what Diaz considered an illegal subsequent term as president.

In 1870, Porfirio Diaz ran against President Juarez and Vice President Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada.

In March 1872, Porfirio Diaz's forces were defeated in the battle of La Bufa in Zacatecas.

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Lerdo offered amnesty to the rebels, which Porfirio Diaz accepted and "retired" to the Hacienda de la Candelaria in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, rather than his home state of Oaxaca.

Porfirio Diaz saw an opportunity to plot a more successful rebellion, leaving Mexico in 1875 for New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas, with his political ally, fellow general Manuel Gonzalez.

Porfirio Diaz launched his rebellion in Ojitlan, Oaxaca, on 10 January 1876 under the Plan of Tuxtepec, which initially failed.

Porfirio Diaz returned to Mexico and fought the Battle of Tecoac, where he defeated Lerdo's forces in what turned out to be the last battle.

In November 1876, Porfirio Diaz occupied Mexico City, and Lerdo left Mexico for exile in New York.

Mexico needed to meet several conditions before the US would consider recognizing Porfirio Diaz's government, including payment of a debt to the US and restraining the cross-border Apache raids.

Porfirio Diaz maintained control through generous patronage to political allies.

Porfirio Diaz's administration became famous for suppression of civil society and public revolts.

Porfirio Diaz saw his task in his term as president to create internal order so that economic development could be possible.

Porfirio Diaz stepped down from the presidency, with his ally, General Manuel Gonzalez, one of the trustworthy members of his political network, elected president in a fully constitutional manner.

Porfirio Diaz devoted time to his personal life, highlighted by his marriage to Carmen Romero Rubio, the devout 17-year-old daughter of Manuel Romero Rubio, a supporter of Lerdo.

Porfirio Diaz had the constitution amended, first to allow two terms in office, and then to remove all restrictions on re-election.

Porfirio Diaz himself met with investors, binding him with this group in a personal rather than institutional fashion.

The close cooperation between these foreign elements and the Porfirio Diaz regime was a key nationalist issue in the Mexican Revolution.

Porfirio Diaz acted similarly with rural elites by not interfering with their wealth and haciendas.

Porfirio Diaz proved to be a different kind of liberal than those of the past.

Porfirio Diaz dissolved all local authorities and all aspects of federalism that once existed.

Porfirio Diaz opposed any significant reform and continued to appoint governors and legislators and control the judiciary.

Porfirio Diaz had not trained as a soldier, but made his career in the military during a tumultuous era of the US invasion of Mexico, the age of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Reform War, and the Second French Intervention.

Porfirio Diaz's regime was not a military dictatorship, but rather had strong civilian allies.

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In office, Porfirio Diaz was able to bring provincial military strongmen under the control of the central government, a process that took fifteen years.

Porfirio Diaz provided opportunities for graft for military men he could not successfully confront on the battlefield.

Porfirio Diaz created military zones that were not contiguous with state boundaries and rotated the commanders regularly, preventing them from becoming entrenched in any one zone, then extended the practice to lower ranking officers.

Porfirio Diaz increased the size of the military budget and began modernizing the institution along the lines of European militaries, including the establishment of a military academy to train officers.

Porfirio Diaz expanded the crack police force, the Rurales, who were under control of the president.

Porfirio Diaz knew that it was crucial for him to suppress banditry; he expanded the Rurales, although it guarded chiefly only transport routes to major cities.

Porfirio Diaz thus worked to enhance his control over the military and the police.

Unlike other Mexican liberals, Porfirio Diaz was not anti-clerical, which became a political advantage when Porfirio Diaz came to power.

Porfirio Diaz won over conservatives, including the Catholic Church as an institution and socially conservatives supporting it.

Porfirio Diaz was a political pragmatist, seeing that the religious question re-opened political discord in Mexico.

When he rebelled against Lerdo, Porfirio Diaz had at least the tacit and perhaps even the explicit support of the Catholic Church.

When he came to power in 1877, Porfirio Diaz left the anti-clerical laws in place, but no longer enforced them as state policy, leaving that to individual Mexican states.

Porfirio Diaz did not publicly renounce liberal anti-clericalism, meaning that the Constitution of 1857 remained in place, but he did not enforce its anti-clerical measures.

Porfirio Diaz sought to attract foreign investment to Mexico to aid the development of mining, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure.

Porfirio Diaz had created such an effective centralized government, he was able to concentrate decision-making and maintain control over the economic instability.

In 1898, the Porfirio Diaz regime faced a number of important issues, with the death of Matias Romero, Porfirio Diaz's long-time political adviser who had made great efforts to strengthen Mexico's ties with the US since the Juarez regime, and a major shift in US foreign policy toward imperialism with its success in the Spanish–American War.

Porfirio Diaz pushed back against this policy, saying that the security of the hemisphere was a collective enterprise of all its nations.

On 17 February 1908, in an interview with the US journalist James Creelman of Pearson's Magazine, Porfirio Diaz stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and elections and that he would retire and allow other candidates to compete for the presidency.

Porfirio Diaz requested the meeting to show US support for his planned seventh run as president, and Taft agreed to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico.

Ultimately Porfirio Diaz did not approve of Madero and had him jailed during the 1910 election.

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Madero had gathered much popular support, but when the government announced the official results, Porfirio Diaz was proclaimed to have been re-elected almost unanimously, with Madero said to have attained a minuscule number of votes.

Porfirio Diaz was forced to resign from office on 25 May 1911 and left the country for Spain six days later, on 31 May 1911.

Porfirio Diaz kept his brother's son Felix Porfirio Diaz away from political or military power.

Porfirio Diaz came from a devoutly Catholic family; his relative, Jose Agustin Dominguez y Porfirio Diaz, was bishop of Oaxaca.

Porfirio Diaz had trained for the priesthood, and it seemed likely that was his career path.

When Porfirio Diaz abandoned his ecclesiastical career for one in the military, his powerful uncle disowned him.

Porfirio Diaz had a relationship with a soldadera, Rafaela Quinones, during the war of the French Intervention, which resulted in the birth of Amada Porfirio Diaz, whom he recognized.

Porfirio Diaz remarried in 1881, to Carmen Romero Rubio, the pious 17-year-old daughter of his most important advisor, Manuel Romero Rubio.

The marriage produced no children, but Porfirio Diaz's surviving children lived with the couple until adulthood.

In 1938, the 430-piece collection of arms of the late General Porfirio Diaz was donated to the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.

Porfirio Diaz graduated as a military engineer and never served in combat.

In Porfirio Diaz's lifetime before his ouster, there was an adulatory literature, which has been named "Porfirismo".

Porfirio Diaz was characterized as a far more benign figure for these revisionists.