From December 1853 until June 1855 he lived in New Orleans in semipoverty, occupying himself by exchanging ideas with other Mexicans and laying plans to return home. Many prominent liberals were exiled, including Juárez. The conservatives’ return to power in the elections of 1853, however, doomed any reform in the near term in Mexico. He also believed that political stability could be achieved only through the adoption of a constitutional form of government based on a federal system. The road to economic health, he concluded, lay in substituting capitalism for the stifling economic monopoly held by the Roman Catholic Church and the landed aristocracy. Politics soon became his life’s work: he was a member of both the state and national legislatures, he became a judge in 1841, and he served as governor of his state, a post that brought him into national prominence.ĭuring his early years in politics, Juárez began to formulate liberal solutions for his country’s many problems. Impeccably honest, he never used public office for personal gain, and his modest way of life reflected his simple tastes, even after his marriage in 1843 to Margarita Maza, a Oaxacan woman 17 years his junior. In 1831 he received a law degree and won his first public office, a seat on the municipal council. He originally studied for the priesthood, but in 1829 he entered the Oaxaca Institute of Arts and Sciences (1827 now Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca) to study law and science. When he was 12, he left the uncle who was caring for him and joined his sister in the city of Oaxaca, where he began his formal education. Juárez was born of Mesoamerican Indian parents, both of whom died when he was three years old.
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