Porfirio Díaz

Biography

Díaz was born in Oaxaca in 1830 to a family of modest means. He trained for the priesthood but switched to law at Oaxaca's Institute of Arts and Sciences, where he came to know Benito Juárez. He joined the Liberals, fighting against Santa Anna under the Plan of Ayutla and against the Conservatives in the Reform War.

During the French intervention he fought at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, was captured when the city fell the next year, escaped, and became military commander of southern Mexico. Captured again in 1865, he escaped once more, and in June 1867 he led the forces that retook Mexico City.

Campaigning against re-election, he revolted against Presidents Juárez and Lerdo de Tejada and took power under the Plan of Tuxtepec in 1876; he was elected president in 1877. After his ally Manuel González served from 1880 to 1884, Díaz returned and governed continuously until 1911. His rule, the Porfiriato, brought stability and economic growth but favoured a small circle of allies and foreign investors, and protest by workers and peasants was repressed.

His claim to an eighth term in the 1910 election led Francisco Madero to call for armed revolt, beginning the Mexican Revolution. After his army's defeats he agreed in the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to step down, resigned on 25 May 1911 and went into exile in Paris, where he died in 1915.