Juarez & Diaz

Two of the most influential leaders in the history of post-colonial Mexico have been Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz. Both men were Presidents of the Republic of Mexico; both, ostensibly, were "liberals." Juarez - whose terms as president (1858 - 1872) were marred by civil war, foreign invasion and general turmoil - is considered one of the guiding lights of Mexican republicanism. By contrast, Diaz' thirty-year tenure (1876 - 80, 1884 - 1911) were peaceful "boom" years, yet his period of leadership is generally considered a failure of the democratic process in Mexican history. How can two such opposing images - chaos vs. accomplishment, hero vs. hated - be reconciled with the historical record? It will be the aim of this paper to study the record on Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz and determine which is the accurate portrayal.

In the drama The Devil and the Good God, existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre's contemplation of the role good and evil play in the execution of power, the question is posed: Which is worse - an evil act that breeds good, or a good act that breeds bad? Should even the concept of good and evil be applied to the exercise of power, except in terms of judging the results?

Sartre was considering the situations in such countries as Russia, where a devout, well-meaning Czar Nicholas had led his country into the destruction of World War I - while twenty-five years later the cruelly monstrous Stalin had saved that same country from Hitler's destructive Nazi j

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sion and the right of the Mexican congress to share power with the presidency - the rules of government that had been adopted or legislated must be uniformly obeyed, not arbitrarily accepted or discarded as the whim so seized the country's leader. Consequently, even when trying to exercise autocratic powers during his post-French Intervention term (1867-72), Benito Juarez asked the congress for its approval, inviting a vote of "no confidence" on his presidency that he survived by only a single vote. Critics were free to revile him and his programs in the halls of congress, in the press and on the streets - which they did with gusto. Political opponents, advocates of unsuccessful coup attempts such a Porfirio Diaz, were granted amnesties: they knew no other way, Juarez reasoned, the democratic process had had so little time to take hold in their hearts, they had so little experience with it. To the end, Benito Juarez maintained an active, demonstrable belief in the process of democratic republicanism. A belief Porfirio Diaz voiced but, apparently, did not consider for very long. A mestizo, a revolutionary general who distinguished himself in the service of Juarez' government during the War of the French Intervention (1862-67

Category: Foreign - J