JUÁREZ, BENITO PABLO. - Mexican politician, b. 21 March 1806 at S. Pueblo Guelatao (Oaxaca), d. 18 July 1872 in Mexico City. He first practiced law, then devoted himself to politics. Of radical and liberal ideas, he was governor of the State of Oaxaca. In 1857 he became vice-president and minister of the Interior. The following year he succeeded Comonfort in the presidency, but the conservatives opposed this appointment and unleashed a civil war, which ended in Jan. 1861 with J.'s entry into Mexico City.
Elected president in March of the same year, he began a policy aimed at stripping of power the conservative party and the Catholic Church, which supported it. He confiscated ecclesiastical property, abolished the privileges of the clergy, suppressed the convents, banished the nuncio, the bishops and anyone who, during the civil war, had supported his adversaries. He adopted the same intransigence in relations with the other States, decreeing the annulment of every treaty, and, given the financial difficulties in which the country was struggling, he suspended for two years the payment of every debt owed abroad. These measures brought about the French military intervention: an expeditionary corps landed in the country in 1862, J. was forced to retreat toward the border with the United States, and Archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Francis Joseph, became emperor of Mexico. The United States, torn apart by the Civil War, were unable in the meantime to grant J. any help, but once the fratricidal struggle was over they granted him every support. J. returned to the offensive, took Maximilian prisoner and ordered that he be shot at Queretaro (19 June 1867). Re-elected president in the same year, J. stood again in the elections of 1871 as well and once more was conferred the highest dignity, but a few months later he died of an apoplectic stroke.
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Silvio Furlani