Porfirio Díaz


Díaz, Porfirio

 

Born Sept. 15, 1830, in Oaxaca; died July 2, 1915, in Paris. Mexican politician and statesman, general.

During the bourgeois revolution and civil war of 1854–60, Diaz fought on the side of the liberals against the conservatives. During the foreign intervention in Mexico (1861-67) he commanded large detachments of the patriotic army. He was president of Mexico from 1877 to 1880; after becoming president again in 1884, he established a despotic regime based on the clergy and landowners. Under Diaz’s dictatorship, Mexico’s economic dependence on Great Britain and the USA increased. The 1910–17 revolution put an end to his regime, and in May 1911 he fled to Europe.