undisputable

Porfirio Díaz

[dee-ahs]

José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican politician (September 15, 1830 – 2 July 1915) that would later become the president of Mexico (from 1876 to 1880 and from 1884 to 1911) and one of the most controversial figures of the country.

The term Porfiriato refers to the years when Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico.

Early years

Porfirio Díaz was born September 15, 1830, in Oaxaca, Oaxaca. He was a Mestizo, of Mixtec ancestry on his mother's side, and European ancestry on his father's side. His father, José Faustino de la Cruz Díaz was a modest innkeeper and died when Porfirio Díaz was three years old. His mother was Petrona Mori Cortés. She later tried to keep the inn going but the business failed. She sent young Porfirio to the Seminario Conciliar in 1843, but he didn't become a priest because he left after he threw off the authority of the church. He joined the local military in 1846, dreaming of defending his country from a threatening United States invasion. In 1850 Porfirio entered the Instituto de Ciencias.

Battle of Puebla (5th of May)

The participation of General Porfirio Díaz in the Battle of Puebla that took place May 5 1862 is commonly mistaken with that of the general's brother, Félix Díaz. It is believed that General Díaz led the volunteer cavalry that protected the flanks of the Mexican army during the battle, but this was in fact his brother Félix who was in charge of a unit of volunteer lancers. By the time of the battle, General Díaz had reached the rank of brigade general in charge of an infantry brigade.

General Bernardo Reyes, General Díaz's brigade was placed in the center between the forts of Loreto and Guadalupe, where he repelled a French infantry attack that was sent as a diversion to distract the Mexican commanders' attention from the forts that were the main target of the French army. General Díaz with his unit fought off a larger French force and then chased after them, in violation of the orders of General Ignacio Zaragoza, who commended the actions of General Díaz during the battle as "brave and notable". There was a second battle of Puebla, fought on April 2, in which the Díaz did lead cavalry units against conservative positions around the city.

In 1863, Díaz was captured by the French Army. He escaped and was offered by President Benito Juárez the positions of secretary of defense or army commander in chief. He declined both but took an appointment as commander of the Central Army. That same year he was promoted to Division General (similar to Lieutenant General).

In 1864, the conservatives supporting Emperor Maximilian asked him to join the imperial cause. Díaz refused. In 1865 he was captured by the Imperial forces in Oaxaca. He escaped and fought the battles of Tehuitzingo, Piaxtla, Tulcingo and Comitlipa. In 1866, Díaz formally declared his loyalty to Juárez. That same year he earned victories in Nochixtlan, Miahuatlan and la Carbonera and once again captured Oaxaca. He was then promoted to general. Also in 1866, Marshal Bazaine, commander of the Imperial forces, offered to surrender Mexico City to him if Díaz withdrew support of Juárez. The offer was declined.

In 1867, Emperor Maximilian offered Díaz the command of the army and the imperial rendition to the liberal cause. Díaz refused both. He went on to win the final battle for Puebla on April 2, 1867.

He remained popular well after the defeat of the French and the death of Juárez in 1872.

Rise to power and political career

In 1870, Díaz ran as presidential candidate against President Juárez and Vice President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. In 1871 he made claims of fraud in the July elections won by Juárez, who was confirmed as president by the Congress in October. In response, Díaz launched the Plan de la Noria (November 8, 1871), supported by a number of rebellions across the country. In March 1872 Díaz's forces were defeated in the battle of La Bufa in Zacatecas. Following Juárez's death on July 9 of that year Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada assumed the presidency and then offered amnesty to the rebels. Díaz accepted in October and "retired" to the Hacienda de la Candelaria in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz.

In 1874 he was elected to Congress from Veracruz. That year Lerdo de Tejada's government faced civil and military unrest, and offered Díaz the position of ambassador to Germany, which he refused. In 1875 Díaz traveled to New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas, to plan a rebellion (see American businessman James Stillman), which was launched in Ojitlan, Oaxaca on January 10, 1876, as the Plan de Tuxtepec. After appointing himself president on November 28, 1876, he served one term and then stepped down in favor of his hand-picked successor Manuel González, one of his underlings. The four-year period that followed was marked by corruption and official incompetence, so that when Díaz stepped up in the next election he was a welcome replacement, and there was no remembrance of his "No Re-election" slogan. During this period the Mexican underground political newspapers spread the new ironic slogan for the Porfirian times, based on the slogan "Sufragio Efectivo, No Reelección" (Effective suffrage, no re-election) and changed it to "Sufragio Efectivo No, Reelección" (No effective suffrage, Re-election). In any case Díaz had the constitution amended, first to allow two terms in office, and then to remove all restrictions on re-election.

He maintained power through manipulation of votes, but also through simple violence and assassination of his opponents, who consequently were few in number. He was a cunning politician and knew very well how to manipulate people to his advantage. A phrase used to describe the order of his rule was "Pan, o palo" ("bread, or the stick"), meaning that one could either accept what was given willingly, or face harsh consequences. From 1892 onwards Díaz's perennial opponent was the eccentric Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda, who lost every election but always claimed fraud and considered himself to be the legitimately elected president of Mexico.

Economic development, human exploitation

The growing part influence of U.S. businessmen, already a sore point in a Mexico that had lost much land to the United States, was a constant problem for Díaz. His modernization program was also at odds with the owners of the large plantations (haciendas) that had spread across much of Mexico. These rich plantation owners wanted to maintain their existing feudal system (peonage), and were reluctant to transform into the capitalist economy Díaz was pushing towards because it meant competing in a global market and contending with the monetary influence of businessmen from the United States.

Though he wished to modernize the country, Díaz by no means opposed the existence of the haciendas, and in fact supported them strongly throughout his rule. He appointed sympathetic governors and allowed the plantation owners to proceed with a slow campaign of encroachment, using the Ley Lerdo, onto collectively owned village land, and enforced such seizure through his well-equipped rural police (rurales). Another support for Diaz was the Mexican Federal Army (Federales).

Collapse of the regime

In a 1908 interview with the U.S. journalist James Creelman, Díaz stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and elections and that he would step down and allow other candidates to compete for the presidency. Many liberals formed clubs supporting the governor of Nuevo León, Bernardo Reyes as a candidate for the presidency, although Bernardo Reyes under the orders of Díaz never formally announced his candidacy. Despite Reyes silence, however, Díaz continued to perceive him as a threat and sent him on a mission to Europe, so that Reyes was not in the country for the elections.

University of California, Berkeley–educated Francisco I. Madero answered the call for candidates. Although Madero was very similar to Díaz in his ideology, he hoped for other elites in Mexico to rule alongside the president, unlike Díaz. Díaz, however, did not approve of Madero and had him jailed during the election in 1910.

Despite this, the election went ahead. Madero had gathered much popular support, but when the official results were announced by the government, Díaz was proclaimed to have been re-elected almost unanimously, with Madero gathering only a minuscule number of votes. This undisputable case of massive electoral fraud aroused widespread anger. Madero called for revolt against Díaz, and the Mexican Revolution began. Díaz was forced from office and fled the country for France in 1911.

In 1915, Díaz died in exile in Paris. He is buried there in the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

In Popular Culture

The film The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918) has Díaz played by Pedro Sose

The film The Mad Empress (1939) has Díaz played by Earl Gunn

The film Juarez (1939) has Díaz played by John Garfield

The film México de mis recuerdos (1944) has Díaz played by Antonio R. Frausto

The film Sobre las olas (1950) has Díaz by Antonio R. Frausto

The film Viva Zapata! (1952) has Díaz by Fay Roope

The Mexican soap opera La Constitución (1970) has Díaz played by Miguel Manzano

The Mexican soap opera El Carruaje (1972) has Díaz played by Salvador Sánchez

Porfirio Díaz is one of the main characters of the Mexican soap opera El Vuelo del Aguila (1996) with Humberto Zurita as the young Díaz and Manuel Ojeda playing Díaz as President and Fabian Robles

The film Zapata - El sueño del héroe (2004) has Díaz by Justo Martínez

Quotations

Díaz is usually credited with the saying, "¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)

Referring to his policy of coopting political opponents, Díaz reportedly said, "a dog with a bone neither barks nor bites" or "a dog with a bone in its mouth neither steals nor kills."

As he headed for exile in May 1911 following the revolt by Francisco Madero, Díaz reportedly remarked, "Madero has unleashed a tiger; let’s see if he can ride it."

Díaz's most infamous quote was the order to Veracruz's governor, Luis Raul Mier y Terán, about a group of followers of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada: "¡Mátalos en caliente!" (Kill them right now).

References

Garner's revisionist biography is the current standard in the field.

Porfirio Díaz, by Paul Garner (2001).
Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution, by John Mason Hart (1989).
The Mexican Revolution, by Alan Knight (1986).
Juárez and Díaz: Machine Politics in Mexico, by Laurens Ballard Perry (1978).
The Age of Porfirio Díaz: Selected Readings, by Carlos Gil (1977).
Mexican Revolution: Genesis Under Madero, by Charles C. Cumberland (1974).
The United States Versus Porfirio Díaz, by Daniel Cosío Villegas, trans. by Nettie Lee Benson (1963).
Porfirio Díaz, Dictator of Mexico, by Carleton Beals (1932).
Díaz, by David Hanney (1917).
Porfirio Díaz, president of Mexico, the master builder of a great commonwealth, by Jose Francisco Godoy (1910).
Life of Porfirio Díaz, by Hubert Howe Bancroft (1885).
Mexico Barbaro, by John Kenneth Turner.