Cumpleaños de Benito Juárez

Happy birthday, Sr. President

Today, Monday March 20, 2023, is the statutory holiday in Mexico honoring the birthday of Mexico's 26th president, Benito Juárez (his actual birthday is March 21, but the holiday is defined as the nearest Monday in March to his actual birth date).

If you've spent any time in Mexico at all, you've seen the name "Juárez" in all sorts of contexts: street names, names of cities and towns, names of airports, on currency, etc. Benito Juárez is probably the Mexican president with the most name recognition, and is, indeed, the only Mexican president with a statutory holiday celebrating his birth.

In honor of his birthday, I offer this recklessly light-on-detail overview of Benito Juárez's life and career, and end with what I consider to be the most interesting aspect of Juárez's place in Mexican history, and how that place highlights a striking difference between the histories of the United States and Mexico.

The Briefest Biography of Benito Juárez Ever Written

Benito Juárez was born on March 21, 1806 to a poor family in rural Oaxaca. His parents died when he was young, so he spent his early life in the care of his uncle, until he left home at the age of 12 to work as a domestic servant in Oaxaca City (today's Oaxaca de Juárez, yet another Benito Juárez namesake). Juárez later enrolled in a Catholic seminary and studied law.

Juárez was politically liberal, opposed the presidency of Antonio López de Santa Anna (the on-again/off-again president of Mexico during the mid 1800s, who some of you may be familiar with as the commander of the Mexican forces who defeated the defenders of the Alamo in what is today San Antonio, Texas), and participated in drafting La Reforma, a set of laws designed to severely limit the powers of the Catholic Church and the Mexican military, and which was the catalyst for the War of the Reform - a conflict between Mexico's liberal and conservative factions which lasted 3 years from 1858 to 1861.

Juárez was not initially elected to the presidency - he was serving as the president of the Supreme Court when, in 1858, then president Ignacio Comonfort resigned during the early phases of the War of the Reform. At that time, Mexico's constitution designated that the president of the Supreme Court would become president of the nation if the acting president became incapacitated or resigned - thus did Juárez succeed Comonfort as president of Mexico.

Juárez was re-elected numerous times, lost much of his position and power during the Second French Intervention (I plan to do an article in the near future which provides an overview of the major events in Mexico's history, including the First and Second French Interventions), and regained full power again when the French and their imposed emperor Ferdinand Maximilian were defeated and ousted in 1866 and 1867 (Maximilian - a foreign emperor installed by a foreign power (France) is yet another fascinating, highly romanticized and ultimately tragic figure in Mexican history; he deserves an article). Juárez died in office in 1872 at the age of 66.

The Variegated Paths of History

Benito Juárez was Zapotec; the Zapotecs are an indigenous people of Mexico concentrated in and around today's state of Oaxaca. As a Zapotec, Juárez was the first indigenous president of Mexico (but not the last); in fact, the first indigenous head of state in all of the Americas. Imagine now that a contemporary of Juárez - the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull - rose to the office of the president of the United States, being re-elected multiple times. Such an imagining requires quite a leap into the realm of historical fantasy - but why? How did Mexico - conquered, colonized and ruled by Spain - end up with indigenous political leaders while the United States - conquered, colonized and ruled (largely) by Britain - could not even conceive of such a thing?

No single dynamic can account for the vastly divergent treatment of - and attitude toward - the indigenous populations of the territories that would become the United States and Mexico. Rather than account for this difference comprehensively, I'll settle for two factors that contribute to some sort of sensical explanation:

Religion

The colonists who arrived on the shores of what would become the U.S. were largely protestant. Having suffered centuries of persecution for their religious beliefs, protestants had developed isolationist, tribal and suspicious outlooks. In order to succeed in constructing a world in which they could freely practice their own beliefs and customs, protestants needed to band together and control outside influences, the same way they had needed to band together and control outside influences in order to survive in an often hostile, Catholic-dominated Europe.

The colonists (conquistadors) who arrived on the shores of what would become New Spain, later Mexico, practiced what was already the dominant religion in Europe: catholicism. The memory of catholic persecution at the hands of the Romans was dim and faded by the 16th century. The Spanish had no recent history of attacks on their belief systems. On the contrary, the catholic leaders who arrived soon after the first waves of conquistadors held an encompassing worldview: they were not suspicious of outsiders, they wanted (often passionately) to bring outsiders into their religious and cultural fold. Many powerful catholic leaders believed that Spain's endeavors in the Americas would have been in vain had they not succeeded in including the indigenous peoples in Spain's cultural expansion.

Marriage and Family Units

Most of the conquistadors were soldiers without families - or at least, without families traveling with them. Spanish soldiers therefore inter-married with indigenous women, blurring the racial and cultural divides between Spanish and indigenous populations. The protestant colonists further north were not primarily motivated (at least early on) by subjugation of a continent: they were motivated to create a better life for their families - families who traveled together in their flight from European oppression. Although inter-marriage between Europeans and indigenous peoples certainly occurred north of today's U.S.-Mexico border, it didn't occur nearly to the extent that it did further south.

Risky Business

There is a risk of sounding profoundly reductionist in trying to explain the differences in attitudes toward the indigenous populations in the U.S. and Mexico in 3 paragraphs. The above are merely contributing factors, something to think about if nothing else. And I want to caution against the appearance that the indigenous experience in Mexico was some sort of bed of roses: the indigenous people suffered - and continue to suffer - greatly as a result of European expansion and conquest.

In the end, though, the U.S. is a civilization somewhat defined by the exclusion of cultures from the Americas; whereas Mexico is a civilization defined by the inclusion of cultures from the Americas and Europe.

Juárez was no saint - he had people executed for political reasons, he defied democratic norms to hang on to power; but he and his successors represent a sort of victory for a people whose roots in the Americas extend deeply into the world before Columbus.