Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are so glad
you're here because today we are looking at a
figure who is, and I mean this quite literally,
everywhere in Mexico. Everywhere. If you have
been to Mexico, you have definitely handled his
face. He is on the 20 peso note. He is on the
500 peso note. You might have flown into an airport
named after him in Mexico City. You could have
walked down a street named after him. And, you
know, not just in Mexico either. There are statues
of him in Chicago, in Washington, D .C. I think
there's even a street named after him in New
Delhi, India. There's even a species of snake
named in his honor. It is genuinely hard to find
a corner of the Mexican map or really Latin American
history that doesn't bear the mark of Benito
Juarez. Exactly. But the thing is, when someone
becomes that ubiquitous, when they become like
a marble statue or just a face on a crumply bill
in your pocket. Yeah. We tend to forget the actual
human story underneath. Right. We forget there
was a person there. And in this case, the story
is almost impossible to believe. I mean, if you
pitch this as a movie script, Hollywood would
probably tell you it's just too unrealistic.
It really, really defies the logic of the time
period. We are talking about a monolingual Zapotec
shepherd boy from a tiny village of maybe 200
people who didn't speak a word of Spanish until
he was 12 years old. And he somehow rises to
become the president of Mexico, defeats a European
empire and completely redefines his nation's
identity. It's a trajectory that, frankly, shouldn't
have been possible in the 19th century. If you
look at the caste system, the economic structures,
the racial hierarchies of the time. Everything.
Everything was designed to keep a person like
Benito Juarez in that village forever. And today
we are going to look at the sources, you know,
extensive biographical records, historical accounts
of the Reform War and the French. intervention
to try and understand how on earth he did it.
So the mission today is to move past the statue.
We want to understand the man who famously said,
among individuals as among nations, respect for
the rights of others is peace. We're going to
unpack his impossible rise, his radical reforms,
and the brutal wars he fought to defend the Constitution.
Okay, so let's start at the very beginning. Where
does a story like this even start? It starts
in the mountains of Oaxaca, specifically in a
village called San Pablo, Guelito. And when we
say humble beginnings, we really need to emphasize
what that meant in 1806. Right. This wasn't a
town. No, not at all. This was a settlement of
maybe 200 people, tops, mostly living in straw
and mud huts. It was incredibly isolated. It
was located on the edge of a mountain pond known
as La Laguna Encantada, the Enchanted Pond. That
sounds incredibly picturesque, almost like something
out of a fable. The Enchanted Pond. It does sound
lovely, but the reality was just incredibly harsh.
This was subsistence living. Benito Juarez was
born there on March 21st, 1806, to Zapotec peasant
parents, Marcelino Juarez and Brigida Garcia.
And he described his parents later in his own
writings as, I think, Indians from the primitive
race of the country. He did. But the tragedy
is that he barely knew them. They both died when
he was just three years old. So he's an orphan
in a remote village almost immediately. That
is, that's a rough start. It gets rougher. His
grandparents took him in for a bit, but they
died shortly after that. So he was eventually
raised by an uncle, Bernardino Juarez. And his
life was defined entirely by labor. There was
no school, no real playtime. He worked in the
cornfields and he worked as a shepherd until
he was 12. And this is the part, the crucial
detail that just sets the stakes for this whole
story. Go on. Up until the age of 12, Bernardino
Juarez was illiterate. And he could not speak
Spanish. He only knew Zapotec. That's the fact
that always floors me. Me too. 12 years old.
In 1818, if you are a 12 -year -old indigenous
boy in the mountains who doesn't speak the colonial
language, your life path is usually set in stone.
Absolutely. You are going to live and die in
that village. So what was the catalyst? How do
you get from shepherding in the mountains to
the state capital? Well, history often pivots
on a mix of necessity and luck. There is a famous
legend, you'll probably hear it if you take a
tour in Mexico, that he lost a sheep and ran
away because he was afraid his uncle would beat
him. The lost sheep theory. Right. But the more
likely driver, based on the historical records,
was actually his sister. She had already moved
to Oaxaca City to work as a cook. In 1818, Juarez
left the village to find her. He literally walked
out of the mountains. He did. It's about a 40
-mile trek over rough terrain. He walked into
the city with the goal of attending school. He
found his sister, and she was working in the
household of a wealthy family, the Mazas. And
this is where that luck part comes in, right?
He gets a job there. He does. He becomes a domestic
servant. He's tending the animals, cleaning.
But he also finds a patron. He started working
for a man named Antonio Salenueva. Okay. Who
is he? Salenueva was a bookbinder and a lay Franciscan.
And he saw something in this young boy intelligence,
a spark, some kind of potential, and he decided
to sponsor him. So the classic patron -protege
dynamic. Yeah. But given that Solon Reva was
a lay Franciscan, I mean, very religious man,
you have to assume the path he laid out for Juarez
wasn't president of the republic. Oh, definitely
not. It was the priesthood. Of course. That was
the only real ladder available back then. If
you were poor and wanted an education in Mexico
in the 1820s, you joined the church. So Juarez
entered the seminary in 1821. And note the timing
on that. That is the same year Mexico finally
wins its independence from Spain. A great point.
The country is being born just as Juarez is beginning
his formal education. He studied theology for
six years. He learned Latin. He learned philosophy.
But, and this is the first major pivot in his
life, he realized he did not want to be a priest.
Which, in 1820s, Mexico was a huge decision.
Walking away from the church was walking away
from guaranteed stability, right? It was. He
wrote later that he felt a cruel distaste for
theological studies. But luckily for him, the
world was changing. The state legislature in
Oaxaca had founded a new institution in 1826
called the Institute of Arts and Sciences. A
secular institution. Exactly. The conservatives
at the time called it a house of prostitution
for the mind because it taught things like science
and law without a religious filter. Juarez transferred
there in 1827 to study law. So this was the moment
he stepped out of the religious sphere and into
the secular political world. Precisely. By 1834,
he was a graduated lawyer admitted to the bar.
OK, so he is a lawyer now. But let's just pause
and contextualize this. An indigenous Zapotec
man practicing law in the 1830s. He isn't just
taking on corporate contracts, I assume. No,
not at all. He goes back to his roots almost
immediately. And this early career period is
so vital for understanding his later politics.
What did he do? One of his first major actions
as a lawyer was representing indigenous villagers
from Loxicha. They were denouncing a priest who
they accused of abuses, things like charging
excessive fees for masses and baptisms. That
is an incredibly bold move. A young indigenous
lawyer challenging the church in the 1830s. Very
bold. And it had immediate consequences. Juarez
didn't win. In fact, he was thrown into jail
along with the community members he was representing.
Wait, he was the lawyer and they threw him in
jail? Yes, for inciting the people. He later
wrote that this experience, seeing the collusion
between the church and the state authorities,
it strengthened his resolve. He realized that
the game was rigged. He wanted to destroy what
he called the pernicious power of the privileged
classes. So that jail cell was basically the
incubator. For his entire political philosophy.
He saw firsthand that the playing field wasn't
just uneven. It was two different fields entirely.
Exactly. He realized that as long as the church
and the military had their own special courts
and privileges, what were called fueros, there
could be no equality before the law. But despite
that setback, his career continued to rise. He
became a judge. And then in 1843, he made a very
significant match in his personal life. He married
Margarita Maza. Maza, wait, let's connect the
dots here. That's the family his sister worked
for, the house where he was a servant. The very
same. She was the adoptive daughter of his sister's
patron. Margarita was 20 years younger than him
and part of Oaxaca's upper class European descended
society. So for an indigenous man, a former fervent
in that very household, to marry the daughter
of the family was a massive social leap. It just
defied all the unwritten rules of the caste system.
It sounds like something out of a novel. Did
the family object? The record suggests it was
accepted, though it was certainly viewed as unusual
by society at large. Margarita famously said
of him, he is very homely, but very good. Oh,
I love that. And it turned out to be a partnership
of incredible strength. She wasn't just some
trophy wife. She would become a pillar for him
during the incredibly difficult years ahead,
managing the family while he was in exile or
fighting wars. So he has the education, the career,
and now the social standing. And eventually this
path takes him to the governor's palace in Oaxaca
in 1847. Yes. And his time as governor is really
the proof of concept for his administrative ability.
He didn't just give speeches. He took over a
state with chaotic finances. He balanced the
budget. He built roads and schools. Education
was always his top priority. Always. And he created
a civil and penal code. Oaxaca became known as
a model state. He proved that a civilian secular
government could actually work and work efficiently.
But in 19th century Mexico, you couldn't just
be a good administrator and live happily ever
after. The national politics were just so volatile.
You had this internal struggle between the liberals
and the conservatives. We really need to break
this down for the listener because these terms
mean something very specific in this context.
Right. We shouldn't map modern American or European
politics onto this. Not at all. To simplify it,
liberals, like Juarez, wanted a secular state.
They looked to the United States and France for
inspiration. They wanted individual rights, capitalism,
and equality before the law. And the conservatives.
They generally wanted to maintain the old Spanish
colonial hierarchy. They believed that the Catholic
Church should be the supreme authority in education
and spiritual life, and that the military should
enforce order. Basically, they believed Mexico
was too chaotic for democracy and needed a strong
hand. So it's a battle between the past and the
future, essentially. And Juarez was firmly on
the liberal side. which meant that when the conservatives,
specifically the dictator Santa Ana, came back
into power in 1853, Juarez was in deep trouble.
Big trouble. Santa Ana was the perennial bad
penny of Mexican history. He just kept turning
up. And when he returned in 1853, he had not
forgotten that Juarez had denied him refuge in
Oaxaca years earlier. Santa Ana was petty. Very.
He had Juarez arrested, confined in the fortress
of San Juan de Ulua, a truly horrific dungeon,
and eventually exiled. Where did he go? Paris?
London? New Orleans. New Orleans. I love this
detail. The future president of Mexico living
in the American South in the 1850s. What on earth
was he doing there? He was rolling cigars. He
found a job in a tobacco factory. He lived in
exile for about 18 months, and it was not glamorous.
He was struggling to make ends meet, living in
cheap boarding houses. And his wife Margarita
stayed in Mexico. She did. She looked after their
children and sent him whatever funds she could
scrape together. But New Orleans wasn't just
a place to hide. It became a meeting ground.
He met other radical exiles there, like Melchor
Ocampo. So you have these brilliant Mexican minds
sitting in New Orleans, hands covered in tobacco
leaf, plotting the future of their country. Exactly.
It was an ideological pressure cooker. They were
refining the ideas that would become La Reforma.
They were asking, why is Mexico failing? And
their answer was... Because we are still a colony
in every sing but name. The church owns half
the land. The army is above the law. We need
to break the system. And when the dictatorship
of Santa Ana was finally ousted by the plan of
Ayutthaya in 1855, Juarez returned to Mexico.
He returned not just as a lawyer, but as a man
with a mission. And he didn't waste any time.
He became the minister of justice. And this is
where we get the first of the big reform laws,
right? The Lake Waters. Yes. The Lee Waters was
revolutionary. It goes right back to his time
in that jail cell. It abolished the Fueros, those
special privileges for the clergy and the military
regarding civil crimes. So all citizens were
equal before civil law. That was the idea. If
a priest committed a civil crime, like theft
or fraud, he would face a civil judge, not a
church court. It was a direct attack on the colonial
structure. It stripped the state within a state
of its legal armor. And then came the Ley Lerdo.
Right. The Ley Lerdo was an economic reform.
It forced the sale of church and communal lands.
The idea was to stimulate the economy by creating
a class of small property owners. Basically,
trying to create a middle class similar to what
the liberals saw in the United States. But this
one backfired a bit, didn't it? This is a nuance
we really need to get into. It did. And it's
a tragic part of the story. The law didn't just
target the church. It targeted all corporate
loan holdings. And in the legal language of the
time, indigenous communal lands, the ejidos,
were considered corporate holdings. Oh, no. Yeah.
So the law forced indigenous villages to break
up their communal land and sell it to individuals.
The liberals thought they were freeing the land
for individual ownership. But in practice, wealthy
speculators bought up most of the land. So the
unintended consequence was that. Many indigenous
communities lost the territories that had sustained
them for centuries. Exactly. It paved the way
for the massive haciendas that would later be
a cause of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. It
is a profound irony that the first indigenous
president oversaw a law that really hurt indigenous
land tenure, even if that wasn't his intention.
It's a very complex legacy. But these laws were
all codified into the Constitution of 1857. This
was the document that was supposed to modernize
Mexico. Religious freedom, civil rights. But
the conservatives were not just going to accept
this lying down. Not at all. The backlash was
massive. You have to understand, the church told
people that if they swore allegiance to this
Constitution, they were going to hell. Literally.
The pope condemned it. The country was on the
brink of civil war. And the moderate president
at the time, Ignacio Comanford, He got cold feet.
He looked at the chaos and thought, we went too
fast. He staged a self -coup, basically. He tried
to suspend the very constitution he had sworn
to uphold. And he imprisoned his own cabinet,
including Juarez, who was then the chief justice
of the Supreme Court. Talk about a toxic workplace.
The president arrests his own team. But then
Cominfor realized he had unleashed a monster
he couldn't control. He realized. The conservatives
didn't want him. They wanted a full rollback
of all the reforms. And the liberals were in
revolt against his betrayal. So in a moment of
panic, Commonfort released Juarez from prison
and then fled the country. And here is where
the legal machinery clicks into place. According
to the Constitution of 1857, who succeeds the
president if he resigns? The chief justice of
the Supreme Court. Benito Juarez. Benito Juarez.
So suddenly, this cigar -rolling lawyer from
Oaxaca is the legitimate president of Mexico.
But he doesn't have a capital. He doesn't have
an army. And the conservatives hold Mexico City.
And that sets the stage for the War of the Reform
or the Three Years War, a brutal civil war. Juarez
and his cabinet were essentially a government
on the run, nomads. They had to flee to Guanajuato,
then to Guadalajara. And it was in Guadalajara
where we get one of the most cinematic moments
in Mexican history. If you're visualizing this,
picture a chaotic palace, smoke shouting. This
is... The brave men do not assassinate moment.
Let's unpack that. It is an incredible scene.
So Juarez was in the government palace in Guadalajara.
A garrison of soldiers mutinied. They switched
sides to the conservatives. They stormed the
room and took Juarez and his minister's prisoner.
The situation was chaotic and the commander of
the mutineers, a Colonel Landa, ordered the prisoners
to be shot. So Juarez is standing there facing
a firing squad. The rifles are raised. This is
it. It should have been. The soldiers raised
their rifles. They were aiming at his chest.
But then the liberal poet and minister, Guillermo
Prieto, who was in the room with him, he jumped
in front of Juarez. He physically put his body
between the president and the guns. Yes. And
he shouted at the soldiers, brave men do not
assassinate. Los valientes no asesinen. He just
started speechifying to them about their duty
as patriots. and it worked it worked the soldiers
hesitated maybe they were moved by the courage
or maybe just confused by the sudden poetry slam
in the middle of a mutiny but they lowered their
weapons wow juarez was saved and eventually they
were allowed to leave the city it just gives
you chills if those soldiers had pulled the trigger
modern mexico would look completely different
absolutely Juarez survived, but they had to keep
moving. They eventually made their way to Veracruz,
the port city on the Gulf Coast. And this was
crucial because holding the port meant they could
collect customs revenue taxes on trade, which
gave them the money they needed to fund the war.
And while he was holed up in Veracruz, looking
out at the ocean, Juarez didn't moderate his
position. He actually doubled down, didn't he?
He did. He decided that there was no going back.
This is when the laws of reform became truly
radical. In 1859, from Veracruz, he decreed the
nationalization of all church property. Not just
a forced sale nationalization. Total nationalization.
He established civil marriage and the civil registry
of births and deaths. He secularized the cemeteries.
Basically, he stripped the church of its role
as the gatekeeper of life and death. Exactly.
Before this, the church recorded your birth,
married you, and buried you. If you weren't a
Catholic, you legally didn't exist and couldn't
be buried in a proper cemetery. Juarez said,
no, the state does that. The state records your
existence. It was a complete separation of church
and state. Now, we do have to address a controversial
moment from this period in Veracruz, the McLean
-Ocampo Treaty. This is often used by Juarez's
critics to say he was willing to sell out the
country to the Americans. What was the deal there?
It's a very sensitive topic. You have to remember
Juarez was desperate. The conservatives were
winning on the battlefield and he needed U .S.
recognition and funds. So his government negotiated
a treaty that would have granted the United States
perpetual transit rights across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec. A route between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. Right. And crucially, the right
to intervene militarily to protect that transit.
That sounds huge. perpetual transit rights. That
is a massive concession of sovereignty. It was.
It shows just how desperate the situation was.
He was willing to risk U .S. influence to defeat
the conservatives. However, and this is the key
historical footnote, the treaty was never ratified.
The U .S. Senate rejected it. Why would the U
.S. Senate reject that deal? Because the U .S.
was about to have its own civil war. The northern
senators did not want to give the South, the
slave states, more territory or influence in
Mexico. So the treaty died. But it remains a
point of debate about how far Juarez was willing
to go. But in the end, the liberals turned the
tide. They won on the battlefield. And in January
1861, Juarez reentered Mexico City. The war was
over. The Constitution was safe. Time to relax.
Right, right. If only. The country was in ruins.
The treasury was completely empty. The infrastructure
was destroyed. And this financial ruin led directly
to the next even greater crisis. The debt crisis.
Yes. In July 1861, Juarez suspended payments
on all foreign debt for two years. He just said,
we can't pay right now. We need to eat. We need
to rebuild. And the European powers, Britain,
Spain, and France did not take that well. No.
They signed the Convention of London and sent
fleets to Veracruz to demand payment. It was
essentially a debt collection agency with battleships.
But Britain and Spain eventually negotiated.
They did. Juarez's diplomats convinced them that
Mexico would pay eventually. They realized Mexico
was broke and that whore wasn't worth it. So
they went home. But France, France had other
ideas. Enter Napoleon III. Napoleon III saw a
huge opportunity. He didn't just want his money
back. The United States was distracted by its
own civil war, so they couldn't enforce the Monroe
Doctrine. He had these grand imperial ambitions.
He wanted to establish a monarchy in Mexico that
would serve as a client state and a buffer against
U .S. expansion. He used the debt as a pretext
to launch a full -scale invasion. And this brings
us to the famous Cinco de Mayo. Right. May 5th,
1862. The French army, considered the best in
the world at the time battle, hardened, well
-equipped to march on the city of Puebla. They
expected an easy walkover. They literally brought
their dress uniforms to wear for the parade in
Mexico City. They did. But the Mexican forces
under General Zaragoza repelled them. It was
a stunning victory. It's so important to clarify,
though, Cinco de Mayo didn't win the war. wasn't
the end. No, not at all. It delayed the French
advance by about a year. But the morale boost
was incalculable. It showed that the Republic
could fight. It created this national myth of
resistance. But the French were serious. Very.
Napoleon sent reinforcements, 30 ,000 troops.
They eventually took Puebla. And by 1863, they
took Mexico City. So Juarez is on the run. Again.
Again. But this time, the enemy isn't just a
domestic political party. It's a foreign superpower
backed by Mexican conservatives. And they brought
in an emperor. Maximilian of Habsburg. Yes. A
European prince, the brother of the Austrian
emperor Franz Josef. The Mexican conservatives
went to Europe and pitched him the throne. They
told him the people of Mexico were clamoring
for a savior. And he believed them. He did. He
was a bit of a romantic, maybe a bit deluded.
He arrived in 1864 with his wife Charlotte, or
Carlotta. They set up court in Chapultepec Castle.
So while Maximilian was playing emperor, organizing
balls, and writing etiquette manuals, what was
hard as doing? This is the period of the Wandering
Republic. This is really the core of the Juarez
legend. He refused to surrender. He refused to
leave the country. He moved his government north,
city by city, San Luis Potosi, Saltillo, Monterey,
Chihuahua. I have read descriptions of this time
where the entire government of Mexico was essentially
contained in a black carriage. Juarez carrying
the National Archives, the seal of the nation,
just moving through the desert dust. And that
image is so powerful because it was true. He
argued that the republic wasn't a place. It was
the law. It was the Constitution. As long as
he, the constitutional president, was on Mexican
soil, the republic lived. He eventually ended
up in Paso del Norte, right on the border with
the U .S., a place we now call Ciudad Juarez.
He was literally at the edge of the map. He couldn't
go any further north without leaving the country,
and he was facing internal threats, too. Being
on the run creates power vacuums. Right. One
of his own generals, Gonzales Ortega, argued
that Juarez's term had technically expired during
the war and that he should step down. And technically
it had. But Juarez used emergency powers to extend
his own presidency. He argued, quite rationally,
that you can't hold an election when half the
country is occupied by a foreign army. He said,
I will hold the office until we can have a vote.
It was controversial. Some called it dictatorial.
But he held the line. He kept the resistance
united under his command. So what turned the
tide? How does a government in a carriage defeat
an empire backed by France? Geopolitics shifted
again. In 1865, the U .S. Civil War ended. The
Union won. And suddenly... the United States
could look south again. And they were not happy
about a French puppet state on their border.
Not at all. They began supplying arms to Juarez
and massing troops on the Rio Grande. They cited
the Monroe Doctrine. No European empires in the
Americas. That puts massive pressure on Napoleon.
Huge pressure. And Napoleon was also facing the
rise of pressure back in Europe. He needed his
troops back home, so he cut his losses. He began
withdrawing French troops in 1866. Maximilian
was left alone. And Maximilian had a chance to
leave, didn't he? He did. The French urged him
to abdicate. But he felt the sense of honor,
a delusion perhaps, that he should stay and share
the fate of his supporters. And he also made
a fatal mistake back in 1865. He signed the Black
Decree. What was that? It was a decree that ordered
the summary execution within 24 hours of anyone
found with arms fighting for the Republic. It
treated the Republican soldiers not as prisoners
of war, but as bandits. So thousands were shot
under this order. Thousands. And that enraged
the Republicans and made the war deeply personal.
It meant that when the tables turned, there would
be no mercy. Republican forces besieged Maximilian
at Querétaro. He was captured in May 1867. And
the world watched this. European monarchs, Victor
Hugo, the Pope, they all wrote to Juarez pleading
for Maximilian's life. He's a prince. Spare him.
Just exile him. But Juarez was immovable. Utterly.
And this is so important. He wasn't killing Maximilian
out of personal spite. He believed he needed
to send a message that would echo through history.
He said, I must demonstrate that Mexico is a
sovereign nation. Any foreigner who tries to
conquer it will pay with their life. He wanted
to end the cycle of foreign interventions once
and for all. So on June 19, 1867, Maximilian
and his top generals were executed by a firing
squad on the Hill of Bells. A harsh justice,
but it effectively ended the era of European
intervention in Mexico. In July 1867, Juarez
returned to Mexico City. The republic was restored.
This period is called the Restored Republic.
Juarez is back in the National Palace. But the
story doesn't end with a happily ever after montage.
The last few years were actually quite difficult,
weren't they? They were. There's a saying that
you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.
And the prose was very dry and very difficult.
Governing is harder than fighting. Much harder.
Juarez had to reconstruct a shattered nation.
He focused heavily on agitation. He appointed
a man named Gabino Bereda to reform the school
system based on positivist ideals, science, and
logic over religious dogma. He tried to stabilize
the economy. He reduced the size of the army.
Which made a lot of soldiers angry. Very angry.
And his personal life took a massive hit. Right.
Margarita Maza, his partner through all the exile
and war, died of cancer in January 1871. It was
a devastating blow to him. They had already lost
five of their children young. And now he lost
her. He was a man who had won the war but was
losing his personal world. And politically, the
hero shine started to wear off. It happens to
all long -serving leaders. He ran for re -election
in 1867, which was expected. But then he ran
again in 1871. By then, he had been in power
either as president or de facto leader for over
a decade. And many liberals, including his old
general, Porfirio Diaz, felt he was becoming
autocratic. Right. The slogan of the liberals,
the very slogan they used against Santa Ana,
had been, Effective suffrage, no re -election.
And here was Juarez re -electing himself. Exactly.
Porfirio Diaz actually launched a revolt, the
Plan de la Noria, accusing Juarez of holding
onto power indefinitely. And it is a profound
irony because Diaz would later become a dictator
who stayed in power for 30 years. But at that
moment, in 1871, he was the one calling Juarez
a tyrant. He was. Juarez suppressed the revolt,
but his health was failing. Yeah. On July 18,
1872, Benito Juarez died of a heart attack in
the National Palace. And there's this moving
detail that he was working until the very end.
He had chest pains, but he was still reading
dispatches, trying to manage the country. A quiet
end to a truly thunderous life. He was given
a state funeral, and his legacy was almost immediately
cemented. Even his rival, Porfirio Diaz, eventually
helped build the Juarez myth to legitimize his
own rule. He became the Benemerito de las Americas,
the distinguished of the Americas. So when we
look back at this incredible arc from the ship
pasture in Guadalupe to the presidency, what
is the key takeaway? Why does he still matter
so much today? I think it's the triumph of the
concept of the rule of law over the rule of men.
Before Juarez, Mexico was run by carios, by charismatic
generals on horseback, by the church. It was
about personal power. Juarez wasn't a military
leader. He was a civilian lawyer in a black suit.
Exactly. He believed that the law, the Constitution,
was the only thing that could make a nation out
of a chaotic collection of regions and classes.
He proved that the Mexican state could exist
independently of the church and independently
of Europe. He forced the world to take Mexico
seriously as a sovereign entity. Precisely. And
he proved that an indigenous man could lead that
nation, shattering the colonial caste system
that had said otherwise for 300 years. embodies
the idea that the nation belongs to its citizens,
not to a crown or a cross. But there is that
lingering question from his later years, isn't
there? That friction. There is. And it raises
a really provocative thought. When does the necessary
man become an obstacle to the democracy he saved?
Juarez saved the Constitution by keeping a tight
grip on power during the war, but he struggled
to let go of that grip when the peace came. It's
a tension that runs through all of political
history. knowing when the battle is over and
when it's time to step aside. It really is. That
is a thought worth holding on to. Next time you
look at a 20 -peso bill, don't just see the face.
See the cigar maker in New Orleans, the prisoner
facing the firing squad in Guadalajara, and the
man in the black carriage refusing to surrender
a republic. Thanks for listening to this deep
dive into Benio Juarez.