Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are really
unpacking a figure who is essentially the definition
of it's complicated. That's putting it mildly.
We're talking about a man whose life story it
reads like a tragic novel or maybe an action
movie that kind of morphs into a political thriller.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. He defines
a massive chunk of Mexican history, a period
literally named after him. The Porfiriato. We
are talking about Porfirio Diaz. It is a fascinating
case study in power. We often look at historical
figures as, you know, static. They're either
the hero on the horse or the villain in the palace.
Good or bad. Exactly. Diaz manages to be both,
depending on which chapter of his life you're
reading. And the central irony, the thing we
really need to get our heads around today, is
that he rose to power fighting against dictatorship.
His whole platform was no re -election. Right.
And then he stays in power for over 30 years.
That is the part that always gets me. It's like,
how do you go from being the guy shouting down
with the tyrant to being the tyrant yourself?
Precisely. He becomes the very thing he fought
against. But to understand how that happens and
to understand the Mexico he created, modern Mexico,
really, we have to look at the mechanics of his
rule. We have to look at the bread or bludgeon
policy. No, no. Palago. Yes. Bread or the stick.
It sounds simple, but it was a very sophisticated
system of control. So for this deep dive, we've
got a stack of sources here. Biographical details,
military records, political analyses drawing
heavily from the Wikipedia entry on Diaz. And
our mission is to trace this arc from the young,
scrappy soldier to the Republican monarch who
eventually had to flee to Paris. And along the
way, we need to ask, was the stability he brought
worth the cost? because that is the question
that still haunts the legacy of the Porfiriato.
You can't really understand Mexico today without
wrestling with that question. Let's start at
the beginning, and I mean the very beginning,
because if you look at his portraits, you know,
the ones where he's got the white mustache, the
medals, looking very European, you wouldn't guess
where he started. No, you absolutely wouldn't.
He was born in Oaxaca in 1830. And his background
was modest. It wasn't the bottom of the barrel,
but it certainly wasn't the elite. Not from the
Mexico City inner circle. Not at all. His father
was a Criollo of Spanish descent who ran a small
inn and an agave farm. Agave. So we're talking
mezcal production. Exactly. A very Oaxacan trade.
But tragedy struck early. His father died of
cholera when Diaz was only three years old. So
he's raised by a single mother. Right. Maria
Petrona Cecilia Mori Cortez. And this is important.
Her mother, Diaz's grandmother, was Mixtec. So
Diaz is of mixed heritage, a mestizo, in a time
when social stratification based on race was
very, very real. He was a provincial boy with
indigenous roots. And like a lot of bright kids
from modest means in that era, the path up, the
only real scholarship program available was through
the church, right? Precisely. His godfather was
a bishop, which was a huge connection to have,
a massive leg up. So the plan was set. Porfirio
was to become a priest. He entered the seminary
at 15. He was learning Latin, theology, the whole
nine yards. But something didn't click. But,
and here's the first major pivot point in his
life. He didn't have the vocation. He realized
that quiet life just wasn't for him. He had other
ambitions. By 1849, he decides the priesthood
isn't going to work. He switches to law. And
this is where history gets a little too poetic.
Because you'll never guess who his mentor was
at the Institute of Arts and Sciences. This is
the part that blows my mind. It's like it was
written for a movie. It really is. His mentor
was none other than Benito Juarez. The future
liberal president. The giant of Mexican history.
The man on the peso notes. The very same. The
man Diaz would later idolize, then fight for,
and eventually run against. But at this stage,
Juarez is the professor. the governor of Oaxaca,
the inspiration. And you have to imagine what
that meant. Juarez was a Zapotec indigenous man
who had risen to the highest levels of law and
politics. For a young mestizo like Diaz, seeing
Juarez must have been electrifying. It showed
him a path was possible. So Juarez brings him
into the fold and Diaz becomes active in liberal
politics because of this connection. We should
probably clarify what liberal meant back then
in Mexico. It's not today's definition. Right.
Good point. In the 19th century, Being a liberal
meant you wanted a secular state. You wanted
to strip the Catholic Church of its massive land
holdings and political power. You wanted a federal
republic. The conservatives, on the other hand.
They wanted a strong central government, maybe
even a monarchy, and to protect the church's
privileges. Exactly. So it was a war over the
soul of the country. A literal war. Several of
them, actually. And that's where Diaz's path
veers away from the courtroom. The mid -19th
century in Mexico was just incredibly tumultuous.
You had the Mexican -American War, the Reform
War between liberals and conservatives, and then
the French intervention. And Diaz gets swept
up in all of it. He joins a battalion during
the Mexican -American War, though he didn't see
combat there. But during the Reform War, that's
where he cuts his teeth. He really proves his
mettle. And he gets hurt. Right. This isn't a
guy leading from the back. Badly. He was shot
in the leg during a battle against conservative
forces. The recovery took four months, but he
kept coming back. He fights his way up to the
rank of general. But the real legend -making
moments, the things that built his reputation,
come during the Second French Intervention. This
is where he turns into an action hero. I was
reading the accounts of the Battle of Pueblo
Cinco de Mayo, and I think people forget Diaz
was a key player there. We always hear about
General Zaragoza. Zaragoza was an overall command,
yes. But on May 5th, 1862, Diaz was commanding
a brigade on the plains to the right of the Mexican
front, a critical position. When the French attacked,
and you have to remember, the French army was
considered the best in the world at this time.
Diaz didn't just hold the line. He pushed back
hard. He repulsed them and inflicted heady casualties.
He even pursued them against orders until he
was called back. It was a moment of pure tactical
brilliance and aggression. So he's a legitimate
war hero. This isn't later propaganda. This is
real. Absolutely not propaganda. He earned those
stripes. Yeah. And it wasn't just that one battle.
The French eventually did take Puebla in a second
siege and Diaz was captured. And this is where
the action movie vibe really kicks in. The great
escapes. I love this part of the story. He escaped
confinement, rejoined the army, and eventually
became the commander of the South. Think about
what that means. While the French and the puppet
Emperor Maximilian controlled the center of the
country, Diaz was essentially running a one -man
resistance down south. He controlled Oaxaca,
Guerrero, Tabasco, and Chiapas. He was a warlord,
basically. But a warlord for the Republic. An
excellent way to put it. Yeah. But then he gets
captured again. Seriously. They caught him twice.
He wasn't very good at not getting captured.
Or he was very good at putting himself in the
thick of it. In 1865, he's forced to surrender
Oaxaca City because he was outnumbered 10 to
1. The French lock him up in Puebla again. They
probably thought, OK, we've got him this time
for good. But they were wrong. Wrong again. He
escapes. The source mentions a second escape
after seven months. It usually involved ropes,
daggers slipping out in the dead of night. It's
incredible. He's out and rebuilding an army almost
immediately. That resilience is incredible. It
explains why people followed him. He wasn't just
a general giving orders from a tent. He was the
guy who couldn't be kept in a cage. That reputation
for being indomitable is crucial. It gave him
an almost mystical quality. By 1867, the tide
turns. The U .S. Civil War ends, which means
the U .S. can start pressuring France to leave.
Right, the Monroe Doctrine finally has some teeth
again. Exactly. The French start pulling out
and Diaz goes on the offensive. He retakes Puebla
in what's called the Third Battle of Puebla.
And I found a detail here that really shows his
character at the time. A very hard edge. Oh,
what's that? After retaking the city, he executed
the imperialist officers. These were Mexicans
who had sided with the French emperor. Yeah.
But he didn't just execute them, he taunted them.
He said, quote, even though they had not lived
like men, they could die like men. Ruthless,
but effective. That victory at Puebla cut off
Mexico City from the coast. It sealed the fate
of Emperor Maximilian. Diaz then moves on to
Mexico City, takes it. And this is interesting.
He hands it over to President Juarez. He plays
the loyal soldier. Here you go, Mr. President.
Your capital is ready. Exactly. But not for long.
No. Not for long, because this is where the story
shifts. The war is over. The external enemy is
gone. Now the internal fighting begins. This
is where we get into the paradox part of the
title. The republic is restored. Juarez is president.
You'd think Diaz would be happy. He won. His
side won. But ambition is a funny thing. He felt
he was owed more. He was the hero of the South.
He ran for president against Juarez in 1867 and
lost. He ran again in 1871 and lost again. And
here is where the soldier stops accepting the
chain of command. Diaz claimed fraud. He accused
his old mentor. His old mentor, Juarez, of holding
onto power for too long. And so he launches a
revolt. The Plan de la Norte. But the slogan.
No re -election. The irony is just, it's so thick
you can cut it with a knife. It is the central
contradiction. He argued that indefinite power
corrupted the presidency. He basically said,
Juarez, you've been in charge too long. It's
undemocratic. But the revolt failed. It did.
The army stayed loyal to the president. But then,
history intervened. Juarez died in Office of
Natural Causes shortly after. So he didn't defeat
Juarez, he outlived him. In a way. Juarez was
succeeded by Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada. Diaz
eventually accepted amnesty. He went back to
farming for a bit. But you know he didn't give
up. No, because in 1876, Lerdo tries to run for
re -election, and Diaz says, absolutely not,
we are doing this again. This brings us to the
plan of Tuxtepec. This is the successful revolution.
Diaz issues a manifesto. And what's the slogan?
Effective suffrage, no re -election. The same
principle. He is painting himself as the defender
of democracy against entrenched incumbents. Exactly.
And this revolution has one of the best anecdotes
in the whole source material. It feels like a
spy novel. Diaz is in the U .S., right? In Texas.
And he's trying to get back into Mexico to lead
the troop. So he needs to get to Veracruz on
the coast. Yes. He boards a steamer disguised
as a doctor. A Cuban doctor. A Cuban doctor,
specifically. But it goes wrong. Some officers
on the ship recognize him. They spot him. So
what does he do? He doesn't try to fight them
on the boat. He jumps overboard. He jumps into
the ocean, tries to swim ashore, but the current
is too strong. Or he's spotted. He gets caught
and brought back to the ship. That is humiliating.
That should be the end of the story. It should
have been the end. He should have been arrested
and executed. But here is the stroke of luck.
The ship's purser was sympathetic to him. The
sources suggest he might have been a fellow mason.
A secret handshake moment. Something like that.
He helps Diaz hide again inside the ship. Wait,
so he jumps off, gets caught, brought back, and
then hides again on the same boat. Correct. He
manages to stay hidden until they dock at the
port of Veracruz. He sneaks off. heads to Oaxaca,
raises an army, and defeats the government forces
at the Battle of Ticoac. That is just sheer tenacity.
You have to give him that. Force of will. Right.
So in 1876, he marches into Mexico City. He's
won. He is the president. He's the champion of
no re -election. And for a moment, he actually
sticks to it. This is a detail people often miss
because of what happens later. He serves his
first term. from 1876 to 1880, and then he steps
down. She actually leaves office. He hands power
to his ally, Manuel Gonzalez. Why? Was he actually
committed to the principle at that point, or
was it something else? I think it was a strategic
move. Yeah. He wanted to maintain the appearance
of constitutional rule. He didn't want to look
like the dictators he had just fought. Plus,
he needed to consolidate his base. So what does
he do in the meantime? He becomes the governor
of Oaxaca. And he even goes on what the sources
call a working honeymoon to the United States.
Oh, right. He takes his new wife, Carmen. And
she's a really important figure in his life,
isn't she? Very important. Carmen Romero Rubio.
She was the daughter of a prominent supporter
of Lerdo Diaz's enemy. By marrying her, she was
healing political rifts. And she was also very
upper class, very pious. She helped polish his
rough edges. And this trip to the U .S., this
working honeymoon. It wasn't just sightseeing.
They go to New Orleans, Washington, D .C., New
York. He was building business ties. He was meeting
with investors, with politicians like Ulysses
S. Grant. He was laying the groundwork for the
economic policies that would define his later
rule. He was selling brand Mexico to the Americans.
Meanwhile, back in Mexico, how is President Gonzalez
doing? The guy keeping the seat warm. Not great.
There are corruption charges, financial troubles.
There was the nickel coinage crisis. People were
furious. It's widely believed that Diaz might
have, well, let's just say he didn't help Gonzalez's
reputation. He might have even sabotaged it a
bit. So he set him up to fail. It certainly looks
that way. Because by the time 1884 rolled around,
the country was sick of the chaos. They were
begging for the strongman to come back. They
looked at Gonzalez and said, this isn't working.
They looked at Diaz and said. He can fix it.
And come back he did. In 1884, Diaz runs again.
And this time, he conveniently forgets all about
that no re -election promise. He amends the Constitution
to allow two terms. Then he amends it to remove
restrictions entirely. And he stays. From 1884
until 1911, he is the absolute ruler of Mexico.
So let's unpack the Porfiriato. Because it wasn't
just him sitting in a chair for 30 years. He
had a very specific way of ruling. You mentioned
bread or bludgeon. How did that work in practice?
Panopallo. It was a system of rewards and punishments.
The bread was patronage. If you were an opponent,
a general with big army or a regional strongman,
Diaz wouldn't necessarily fight you. He'd buy
you off. He'd offer you a government job. He'd
give you a contract. He'd make you a governor.
He co -opted them. He made them part of the system.
Why fight Diaz when being his friend makes you
rich? A kind of if you can't beat him, have him
join you philosophy. Precisely. And if he didn't
take the bread, if he had principles or just
wanted more. Then you got the bludgeon, the stick,
repression. He expanded the rural police force.
Now, these guys are interesting. They were nominally
there to stop banditry on the roads. Which they
did. And they did that. They made transport safer
for commerce, which the foreign investors absolutely
loved. But they weren't just traffic cops. No.
They were his personal enforcers in the countryside.
They suppressed peasant uprisings. If a village
complained about land theft, the Rurales would
ride in. They intimidated political rivals. It
was a police state disguised as law and order.
He also had this motto, little of politics and
plenty of administration. Which is a very polite
way of saying democracy is messy and inefficient,
so let's just have a dictatorship. He viewed
politics, debate, elections, opposition as an
obstacle to progress. He wanted scientific administration.
And that leads us to the scientificos, the scientists.
Yes. This was a group of advisors led by his
finance minister, Jose Yves Lementour, who were
essentially coptocrats. They were positivists.
They believed that the country should be run
like a business or a machine based on data and
science. Their motto was order and progress.
Exactly. And that sounds good on paper. Who doesn't
want progress? But the order part meant suppressing
dissent. And the progress part was very, very
top down. And you have to say, under their guidance,
the Mexican economy did explode. The numbers
are staggering for that time. The source calls
it the golden age of Mexican economics. The peso
was strong. I think it was $3 .2 per peso. That
is wild to think about now. It is. And the modernization
was rapid. They built thousands upon thousands
of miles of railways. Before Diaz, moving goods
across Mexico was a nightmare of bandits and
bad roads. He connected the country with steel.
Telegraph lines connected the cities. Mining
boomed. The notes mention Santa Rosalia as a
specific example. What happened there? Yes, that's
a perfect case study. It was a copper mining
town in Baja, California. A French mining company
came in. Diaz gave them a 70 -year tax waiver.
Seventy years. Basically, come here, take the
copper, don't pay taxes, just build the town.
And they did. It became a prosperous zone with
French architecture in the middle of the desert.
But this growth had a specific flavor, didn't
it? It wasn't homegrown industry for the most
part. It was foreign. It was almost entirely
foreign capital. Diaz and his advisors practiced
what they called defensive modernization. Diaz
is famous for the quote. Poor Mexico, so far
from God, so close to the United States. I've
heard that one. It's iconic. He knew he couldn't
stop American influence. The U .S. was the giant
next door, so he tried to harness it. He encouraged
a peaceful invasion of U .S. capital. What was
the logic there? He thought if American businesses
were heavily invested in Mexico, if they owned
the mines and the railroads, the U .S. government
wouldn't invade militarily because they wouldn't
want to damage their own assets. That is a 4D
chess move. Using their greed to protect your
sovereignty. It was brilliant in a way. But it
meant that by 1910, foreigners owned a huge percentage
of Mexico's wealth. American and British companies
owned the railroads, the oil, the mines. So on
the surface, Mexico is booming. There are trains,
there are factories, the credit rating is good.
If you were a foreign investor reading the Wall
Street Journal in 1900, you loved Porfirio Diaz.
You saw him as a miracle worker. But we have
to look at the cost. Because you don't stay in
power for 30 years with a bludgeon unless there
are people you need to hit. This is the dark
side of the porfiriato, and it's why the revolution
happened. The stability came at a massive price
for the average Mexican. Let's talk about the
land, because this seems to be the biggest grievance,
the one that really lit the fuse. It was essentially
a massive land grab. The government wanted to
modernize agriculture. They thought communal
farming, which indigenous villages had done for
centuries, was inefficient. So they hired survey
companies to measure public lands. And how did
they pay these surveyors? This is the scam. They
allowed the companies to keep one -third of the
land they surveyed. One -third. That creates
a massive incentive to find as much public land
as possible. A perverse incentive, exactly. And
they often sold the rest to foreign investors
or cronies of the regime. But the real tragedy
was how they defined public land. Many indigenous
communities and small farmers had lived on their
land for generations. But they didn't have a
deed. They didn't have a piece of paper from
a courthouse. Because they never needed one before.
It was just understood. Right. So the surveyors
would come in and say, you have no title. This
is public land. Now it belongs to us. That is
dispossession on an industrial scale. The source
mentions the Totonac people in Papantla. They
lost their vanilla -growing lands, which led
to revolts. By 1900, over 90 % of communal land
in the central plateau had been sold off. Think
about that number. 90%. That is a complete dismantling
of a way of life. It forced about 9 .5 million
peasants into service for big landowners. They
went from being independent farmers to being
debt peons on haciendas. They were essentially
serfs in their own country. And the inequality
in the cities wasn't much better. The source
mentions a really depressing statistic about
alcohol. Yes. In Mexico City, the number of bars
went from 51 to 1 ,400 during his rule. Alcoholism
rose drastically. It was a symptom of the social
dislocation. People were moving to the city looking
for work, ending up in slums, and drinking to
numb the misery. A while, a tiny elite circle
was living in European -style luxury. Literally
building French mansions in Mexico City, while
the vast majority were sinking deeper into poverty.
There's also the issue of the church. Diaz was
a liberal, and liberals were historically anti
-clerical. They wanted to separate church and
state. But Diaz seems to have changed his tune.
It was, again, pragmatism. The reform laws were
still on the books. Diaz didn't repeal them.
He just stopped enforcing them. He allowed the
church to regain its economic power and its role
in education because he needed the church as
a stabilizing force. He knew the church could
help keep the peasants calm. The source gives
a personal reason for this, too. Something that
happened to his brother, Felix. That is a gruesome
story, but it explains a lot. Felix Diaz was
governor of Oaxaca and a hardline anti -clerical
liberal. He was aggressive. He once dragged a
saint statue through the streets to mock the
locals' faith. That is asking for trouble. The
villagers eventually caught him and killed him
for it. And the source implies they did worse
to his body than he did to the statue. Porfirio
saw that. He understood that pushing the church
too hard, especially in rural Mexico, was political
suicide. So he made peace. He even married his
second wife, Carmen, who was very pious, to signal
that truce. It was a way of saying the war with
the church is over. So we have a dictator who
has stabilized the economy, made peace with the
church, and crushed the opposition. It feels
like he could have gone on forever. The system
was locked down. It certainly seemed that way.
But then in 1908, he gives an interview that
changes everything. The Creelman interview. James
Creelman was an American journalist for Pearson's
magazine. Diaz is getting old now. He's nearing
80. And perhaps feeling secure or perhaps just
wanting to look like an enlightened statesman
to the Western world, he told Creelman that Mexico
was ready for democracy. And he said he wouldn't
run again, right? That was the bombshell. He
said he would welcome an opposition party. He
said he would step down in 1910. Why? on earth
would he say that? Did he actually mean it? Most
historians think he was fishing for a compliment.
He expected the country to gasp and say, no,
no, Don Porfirio, we need you. You can't leave
us. He wanted a mandate, but he miscalculated
badly. People took him literally. It broke the
spell. Suddenly, opposition parties started organizing
openly. They said, the president said we can
run, so we're running. One of them was led by
Francisco Esasco Madero. A wealthy landowner
from the north, not exactly a peasant revolutionary.
No, not at all. He was a vegetarian, a spiritualist,
a very eccentric rich guy. But he wrote a book
called The Presidential Succession of 1910, and
it became a bestseller. It tapped into a huge
well of discontent. And this all coincides with
the centennial in 1910. This was supposed to
be Diaz's crowning moment. The 100th anniversary
of Mexican independence, it was a massive party.
The source describes the program covers. It showed
Hidalgo, the father of the country, then Juarez,
representing Lex or law, and finally Diaz, representing
Pax or peace. He was literally painting himself
into the pantheon of national heroes. Absolutely.
But while they were drinking champagne in the
Capitol... The country was fracturing. The 1910
election comes around. Diaz, who sees Madero
gaining all this support, changes his mind about
retiring. Of course he does. He runs again, and
Madero runs against him. And Diaz does what he
always does, the bludgeon. He jails Madero. He
rigs the election. He claims a near -unanimous
victory. But the old trips didn't work this time.
No. The country had changed. The spell was broken.
They wouldn't accept it. Madero escapes jail,
goes to the U .S., and issues the plan of San
Luis Potosi. He calls for armed rebellion on
November 20, 1910. And to everyone's surprise,
the Porfirian Peace collapsed like a house of
cards. It was shocking how quickly it fell apart.
The Federal Army was old. The generals were ancient.
Diaz hadn't updated the leadership because he
feared rivals. He didn't want a young, charismatic
general challenging him, so he kept the old guys
in charge. And they were no match for the new
threats. Not at all. When the rebellions broke
out, Pancho Villa in the north, Zapata in the
south, the army couldn't cope. They were slow,
unmotivated, and completely overwhelmed. It happened
so fast. The election was in 1910. By May 1911,
just a few months later, Diaz is signing his
resignation. The Treaty of Ciudad Juarez. He
resigned on May 25th, 1911. It was the end of
an era. He packed his bags, took a train to Veracruz,
and boarded ship to Paris. And he never came
back? No. He died in Paris in 1915. He's buried
at Montparnasse Cemetery. And it is so telling
that to this day there have been attempts to
return his remains to Mexico, but they always
fail. Why is that? Because he is still too controversial.
The revolution that ousted him became the founding
myth of modern Mexico. To bring him back would
be to honor the villain of that story. And yet
he built the country. He built the infrastructure
that the revolution was hot on. Exactly. It really
is a full circle journey. He starts as the young
soldier fighting for the republic, fighting against
a French emperor. He ends up as an old man living
in France, looking very much like an emperor
himself, ousted by a revolution calling for effective
suffrage, no re -election, the very words he
used to take power. It is the tragedy of holding
on too long. He built the railroads. He built
the economy. He created the modern state. But
he forgot the human element. He forgot that bread
isn't enough if you have no voice and the bludgeon
only works until people aren't afraid of it anymore.
And he forgot that you cannot rule a country
as diverse and complex as Mexico with just a
spreadsheet and a police force. The pressure
just builds and builds until it has to be released.
So wrapping this up, what does this all mean
for us today? Why should you, listening right
now, care about a Mexican president from over
100 years ago? I think it's a profound lesson
about the cost of stability. We often crave order.
We want the trains to run on time. We get frustrated
with political gridlock. Diaz did that. He fixed
the gridlock. But he did it by hollowing out
the institutions that allow a society to correct
itself. You remove the safety bells. Precisely.
When you remove politics, when you remove the
ability to change course peacefully, you ensure
that the only way to change is through explosion.
The Mexican Revolution was that explosion. Ten
years of brutal civil war. It's a powerful reminder
that democracy might be messy, but the alternative
is usually brittle. It looks strong, but it breaks
instead of bending. Well put. The Porfiriato
was a gilded cage. It was beautiful on the outside,
but it was still a cage. I want to leave the
listeners with one last image, a final thought.
Go online and look up a photo of young General
Diaz from the 1860s. He's unpolished, staring
down the camera, the scrappy fighter ready to
take on the French. Then look at the official
photo of him in 1910, covered in gold braid with
that big white mustache, surrounded by elites,
looking completely detached from the dusty reality
of the country he ruled. The whole story is right
there in those two faces. Absolutely. The transformation
from the hero of the republic to the villain
of the revolution. It's all there. Thanks for
diving in with us. We'll see you next time.