JUAREZ, BENITO PABLO. — Mexican statesman, b. on 21 March 1806 at S. Pueblo Guelatao (Oajaca), d. on 18 July 1872 in Mexico City. He initially practised law, then devoted himself to politics. Radical and liberal in his ideas, he became governor of the State of Oajaca. In 1857 he became vice-president and Minister of the Interior. The following year he succeeded Comonfort to the presidency, but the conservatives opposed this appointment and unleashed a civil war, which ended in January 1861 with J.’s entry into Mexico City.
Elected president in March of the same year, he began a policy aimed at disempowering the conservative party and the Catholic Church, which supported II. He confiscated ecclesiastical property, abolished the privileges of the clergy, suppressed convents, and expelled the nuncio, the bishops, and anyone who, during the civil war, had supported his opponents. He adopted the same intransigence in relations with other States, decreeing the annulment of every treaty and, given the financial difficulties in which the country found itself, suspending for two years payment of every foreign debt. These measures brought about French military intervention: an expeditionary force landed in the country in 1862, J. was forced to withdraw toward the frontier with the United States, and the archduke Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, became emperor of Mexico. The United States, torn apart by the Civil War, was meanwhile unable to provide J. with any assistance, but once the fratricidal conflict had ended, it granted him every support. J. returned to the offensive, took Maximilian prisoner, and ordered him to be shot at Queretaro (19 June 1867). Re-elected president in the same year, J. also stood in the elections of 1871 and was once again awarded the highest office, but a few months later he died of an apoplectic stroke.
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