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 juggernaut. Sartre's analogy could easily have been applied to personalities as diverse as Neville Chamberlain and Mao Tse-Tung. Or Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz.
In the "official" history of Mexico today - "official" being an important distinction, given the country's one-party rule since the 1920s - the lawyer-turned-politician Benito Juarez is accorded the mantle of the "good" president, while soldier-politician Diaz is denigrated as "bad." Even non-"...