urez Garca (Spanish: [benito palo xwaes garsi.

a] (About this sound listen); 21

March 1806 18 July 1872)[1][2] was a Mexican lawyer and liberal politician of Zapotec
origin from Oaxaca.
He held power during the tumultuous decade of 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. Jurez remained in
the presidential office until his death by natural causes in 1872. He weathered the War
of the Reform (185860), a civil war between Liberals and Conservatives, and then the
French invasion (186267), which was supported by Mexican Conservatives. Never
relinquishing office although forced into exile in areas of Mexico not controlled by the
French, Jurez tied Liberalism to Mexican nationalism and maintained that he was the
legitimate head of the Mexican state, rather than Emperor Maximilian. When the
French-backed Second Mexican Empire fell in 1867, the Mexican Republic with Jurez
as president was restored to full power.[6][7][8] In his success in ousting the European
incursion, Latin Americans considered his a "second struggle for independence, a
second defeat for the European powers, and a second reversal of the Conquest."[9]

He was of poor, rural, indigenous origins, but he became a well-educated, urban

professional and politician, who married a socially prominent white woman of Oaxaca
City.[3] He identified primarily as a Liberal and he wrote only briefly about his
indigenous heritage.[4] 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.[5] He
was not an intellectual star of Mexican liberalism or strict ideologue, but he was a
brilliant, pragmatic, and ruthless politician.