Benito Juárez Monument

Benito Juárez, Rampart St, New Orleans, (21 March 1806 – 18 July 1872) was a Mexican lawyer and liberal politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca. He was of humble, rural, indigenous origins, but he became a well-educated, urban professional and politician, who married a socially prominent white woman of Oaxaca City. He identified primarily as a Liberal and he wrote only briefly about his indigenous heritage. He was a key figure in the group of professional men in Mexico's indigenous south, and his rise to national power had its roots in that power base. He was not an intellectual star of Mexican liberalism or strict ideologue, but he was a brilliant, pragmatic, and ruthless politician. He held power during the tumultuous decade of the the Liberal Reform and French invasion. In 1858 as head of the Supreme Court, he became president of Mexico by the succession mandated by the Constitution of 1857 when moderate liberal President Ignacio Comonfort was forced to resign by Mexican conservatives. Juárez remained in the presidential office until his death by natural causes in 1872.

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