official" historians generally dump on Porfirio Diaz.
Which is in stark contrast to the analysis at the turn-of-the-century. At that time, when Diaz was entering the final third of his thirty-year tenure of power, when living memory might well have been expected to express displeasure with the man's autocratic rule (or, at least, impatience with his staying on top for so long), the President of Mexico was lauded at home and abroad as a progressive, prosperity-bringing, peace-giving leader. Benito Juarez, meanwhile - yes, the now-sainted Juarez - was generally relegated to footnotes in history books, if his name appeared at all. It was Juarez, those chroniclers of ninety years ago noted, whose presidencies were characterized by anarchy and the alienation of Mexican society from within and without. Diaz, it was appreciated, had brought respect to the nation, order to its way of life, and closed the wounds of civil disorder which his predecessor had been so adept at opening in the first place.
Of course, it might be noted, those commentaries circa 1900 were largely written by technocrats, called cientificos, in the employ of President Porfirio Diaz - or by foreigners wined, dined and treated better than Mexicans could ever hope to be by the Diaz government. Hence, the one-time revolutionary Diaz, who came to power only after chafing under the shadow of Juarez for two decades (three, actually: Benito Juarez had once been the young Diaz' teacher - and knew how badly the village boy read and spoke Spanish!), obviously believed that his own worth was at least partially dependent upon how low an evaluation could be made of the incorruptible, idealistic Benito Juarez. Juarez had already set the tone of the political dialogue when Diaz came to power in 1876; the catchphrases were his; the identification "liberal" must be assumed by whoever his successor was to be if civil war was to be averted. Even in his posthumous moments of deep...