Porfirio Díaz in the context of "United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution"

Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundaries with the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Caribbean Sea to the southeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km (761,610 sq mi), and is the thirteenth-largest country in the world by land area. With a population exceeding 130 million, Mexico is the tenth-most populous country in the world and is home to the largest number of native Spanish speakers. Mexico City is the capital and largest city, which ranks among the most populous metropolitan areas in the world.

Human presence in Mexico dates back to at least 8,000 BC. Mesoamerica, considered a cradle of civilization, was home to numerous advanced societies, including the Olmecs, Maya, Zapotecs, Teotihuacan civilization, and Purépecha. Spanish colonization began in 1521 with an alliance that defeated the Aztec Empire, establishing the colony of New Spain with its capital at Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City. New Spain became a major center of the transoceanic economy during the Age of Discovery, fueled by silver mining and its position as a hub between Europe and Asia. This gave rise to one of the largest multiracial populations in the world. The Peninsular War led to the 1810–1821 Mexican War of Independence, which ended Peninsular rule and led to the creation of the First Mexican Empire, which quickly collapsed into the short-lived First Mexican Republic. In 1848, Mexico lost nearly half its territory to the American invasion. Liberal reforms set in the Constitution of 1857 led to civil war and French intervention, culminating in the establishment of the Second Mexican Empire under Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, who was overthrown by Republican forces led by Benito Juárez. The late 19th century saw the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, whose modernization policies came at the cost of severe social unrest. The 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution led to the overthrow of Díaz and the adoption of the 1917 Constitution. Mexico experienced rapid industrialization and economic growth in the 1940s–1970s, amidst electoral fraud, the Tlatelolco massacre, and economic crises. The late 20th century saw a shift towards neoliberalism, marked by the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, amidst unrest in Chiapas.

The Porfiriato or Porfirismo (/ˌpɔːrfɪəriˈætoʊ/, Spanish: [poɾfiˈɾjato]), coined by Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villegas, is a term given to the period when General Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico under an authoritarian military dictatorship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Seizing power in a coup in 1876, Díaz pursued a policy of "order and progress" [es], inviting foreign investment in Mexico and maintaining social and political order, by force if necessary. There were significant economic, technological, social, and cultural changes during this period.

As Díaz approached his 80th birthday in 1910, having been continuously elected since 1884, he still had not put in place a plan for his succession. The fraudulent 1910 elections are usually seen as the end of the Porfiriato. Violence broke out, Díaz was forced to resign and go into exile, and Mexico experienced a decade of regional civil war, the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It saw the destruction of the Federal Army, its replacement by a revolutionary army, and the transformation of Mexican culture and government. The northern Constitutionalist faction prevailed on the battlefield and drafted the present-day Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to create a strong central government. Revolutionary generals held power from 1920 to 1940. The revolutionary conflict was primarily a civil war, but foreign powers, having important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles; the U.S. involvement was particularly high. The conflict led to the deaths of around one million people, mostly non-combatants.

Although the decades-long regime of President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) was increasingly unpopular, there was no foreboding in 1910 that a revolution was about to break out. The aging Díaz failed to find a controlled solution to presidential succession, resulting in a power struggle among competing elites and the middle classes, which occurred during a period of intense labor unrest, exemplified by the Cananea and Río Blanco strikes. When wealthy northern landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election and Díaz jailed him, Madero called for an armed uprising against Díaz in the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Rebellions broke out first in Morelos (immediately south of the nation's capital city) and then to a much greater extent in northern Mexico. The Federal Army could not suppress the widespread uprisings, showing the military's weakness and encouraging the rebels. Díaz resigned in May 1911 and went into exile, an interim government was installed until elections could be held, the Federal Army was retained, and revolutionary forces demobilized. The first phase of the Revolution was relatively bloodless and short-lived.

The history of Mexico spans over three millennia, with the earliest evidence of hunter-gatherer settlement 13,000 years ago. Central and southern Mexico, known as Mesoamerica, saw the rise of complex civilizations that developed glyphic writing systems to record political histories and conquests. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century established New Spain, bringing Spanish rule, Christianity, and European influences.

Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, after a prolonged struggle marked by the Mexican War of Independence. The country faced numerous challenges in the 19th century, including regional conflicts, caudillo power struggles, the Mexican–American War, and foreign interventions like the French invasion. Efforts at modernization during La Reforma included promoting civil liberties and the separation of church and state, but the country was still beset by internal strife and external threats, including the Second Mexican Empire.

The history of the Catholic Church in Mexico dates from the period of the Spanish conquest (1519–21) and has continued as an institution in Mexico into the twenty-first century. Catholicism is one of many major legacies from the Spanish colonial era, the others include Spanish as the nation's language, the Civil Code and Spanish colonial architecture. The Catholic Church was a privileged institution until the mid nineteenth century. It was the sole permissible church in the colonial era and into the early Mexican Republic, following independence in 1821. Following independence, it involved itself directly in politics, including in matters that did not specifically involve the Church.

In the mid-nineteenth century the liberal Reform brought major changes in church-state relations. Mexican liberals in power challenged the Catholic Church's role, particularly in reaction to its involvement in politics. The Reform curtailed the Church's role in education, property ownership, and control of birth, marriage, and death records, with specific anticlerical laws. Many of these were incorporated into the Constitution of 1857, restricting the Church's corporate ownership of property and other limitations. Although there were some liberal clerics who advocated reform, such as José María Luis Mora, the Church came to be seen as conservative and anti-revolutionary. During the bloody War of the Reform, the Church was an ally of conservative forces that attempted to oust the liberal government. They also were associated with the conservatives' attempt to regain power during the French Intervention, when Maximilian of Habsburg was invited to become emperor of Mexico. The empire fell and conservatives were discredited, along with the Catholic Church. However, during the long presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) the liberal general pursued a policy of conciliation with the Catholic Church; though he kept the anticlerical articles of the liberal constitution in force, he in practice allowed greater freedom of action for the Catholic Church. With Díaz's ouster in 1911 and the decade-long conflict of the Mexican Revolution, the victorious Constitutionalist faction led by Venustiano Carranza wrote the new Constitution of 1917 that strengthened the anticlerical measures in the liberal Constitution of 1857.

The Lerdo Law (Spanish: Ley Lerdo) was the common name for the Confiscation of Law and Urban Ruins of the Civil and Religious Corporations of Mexico, part of La Reforma. It targeted not only property owned by the Catholic Church, but also properties held in common by indigenous communities and transferred them to private hands. Liberals considered such corporate ownership as a major impediment to modernization and development in Mexico. Drafted by Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, it was signed on 25 June 1856 by President Ignacio Comonfort, but its language was ambiguous, needing subsequent clarifications.

Its objectives were to create a market in rural real estate and incentivize development; create rural middle class, improve public finances of the state, and revive the economy by eliminating restrictions on freedom of movement. Properties were to be sold to private individuals, which was expected to stimulate the real estate market and to generate government revenue by a sales tax. Much property held by the Catholic Church was urban and exempt from confiscation. The impact was felt most by indigenous communities, now forced to break up holdings held in common that had allowed communities to retain control of their land. The rural poor lacked the funds to buy property and pay the transfer fees. Most purchasers were large landowners or foreign investors, which further concentrated land ownership. Religious groups and their civil corporations were prohibited from purchasing land sold under law unless for strictly-religious purposes. Implementation of the law was disrupted by the Reform War (1858–60) and the French Intervention (1862–67), but resumed with the defeat of the French invaders and their Conservative allies in 1867. Implementation resumed after that, but not until the regime of Porfirio Díaz was the impact felt significantly.

The Restored Republic (Spanish: República Restaurada) was the era of Mexican history between 1867 and 1876, starting with the liberal triumph over the Second French Intervention in Mexico and the fall of the Second Mexican Empire and ending with Porfirio Diaz's ascension to the presidency. It was followed by the three-decade dictatorship known as the Porfiriato.

The Liberal coalition that had weathered the French intervention split after 1867, to the point of resulting in armed conflict. Three men would dominate politics in this era: Benito Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. Lerdo's biographer summed up the three ambitious men: "Juárez believed he was indispensable; while Lerdo regarded himself as infallible and Díaz as inevitable."

The military history of Mexico encompasses armed conflicts within that nation's territory, dating from before the arrival of Europeans in 1519 to the present era. Mexican military history is replete with small-scale revolts, foreign invasions, civil wars, indigenous uprisings, and coups d'état by disgruntled military leaders. Mexico's colonial-era military was not established until the eighteenth century. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early sixteenth century, the Spanish crown did not establish on a standing military, but the crown responded to the external threat of a British invasion by creating a standing military for the first time following the Seven Years' War (1756–63). The regular army units and militias had a short history when in the early 19th century, the unstable situation in Spain with the Napoleonic invasion gave rise to an insurgency for independence, propelled by militarily untrained men fighting for the independence of Mexico. The Mexican War of Independence (1810–21) saw royalist and insurgent armies battling to a stalemate in 1820. That stalemate ended with the royalist military officer turned insurgent, Agustín de Iturbide persuading the guerrilla leader of the insurgency, Vicente Guerrero, to join in a unified movement for independence, forming the Army of the Three Guarantees. The royalist military had to decide whether to support newly independent Mexico. With the collapse of the Spanish state and the establishment of first a monarchy under Iturbide and then a republic, the state was a weak institution. The Roman Catholic Church and the military weathered independence better. Military men dominated Mexico's nineteenth-century history, most particularly General Antonio López de Santa Anna, under whom the Mexican military were defeated by Texas insurgents for independence in 1836 and then the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846–48). With the overthrow of Santa Anna in 1855 and the installation of a government of political liberals, Mexico briefly had civilian heads of state. The Liberal Reforms that were instituted by Benito Juárez sought to curtail the power of the military and the church and wrote a new constitution in 1857 enshrining these principles. Conservatives comprised large landowners, the Catholic Church, and most of the regular army revolted against the Liberals, fighting a civil war. The Conservative military lost on the battlefield. But Conservatives sought another solution, supporting the French intervention in Mexico (1862–65). The Mexican army loyal to the liberal republic were unable to stop the French army's invasion, briefly halting it with a victory at Puebla on 5 May 1862. Mexican Conservatives supported the installation of Maximilian Hapsburg as Emperor of Mexico, propped up by the French and Mexican armies. With the military aid of the U.S. flowing to the republican government in exile of Juárez, the French withdrew its military supporting the monarchy and Maximilian was caught and executed. The Mexican army that emerged in the wake of the French Intervention was young and battle tested, not part of the military tradition dating to the colonial and early independence eras.

Liberal General Porfirio Díaz was part of the new Mexican military, a hero of the Mexican victory over the French on Cinco de Mayo 1862. He revolted against the civilian liberal government in 1876, and remained continuously in the presidency from 1880 to 1911. Over the course of his presidency, Díaz began professionalizing the army that had emerged. By the time he turned 80 years old in 1910, the Mexican military was an aging, largely ineffective fighting force. When revolts broke out in 1910–11 against his regime, a rebel forces scored decisive victories over the Federal Army in the opening chapter of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Díaz resigned in May 1911, but Francisco I. Madero, on whose political behalf rebels rose against Díaz, demobilized the rebel forces and kept the Federal Army in place. "This single decision cost [Madero] the presidency and his life." Army General Victoriano Huerta seized the presidency of Madero in 1913, with Madero murdered in the coup d'état. Civil war broke out in the wake of the coup. Huerta's Federal Army racked up one defeat after another by the revolutionary armies, with Huerta resigning in 1914. The Federal Army ceased to exist. A new generation of fighting men, most of whom with no formal military training but were natural soldiers, now fought against each other in a civil war of the winners. The Constitutionalist Army under the civilian leadership of Venustiano Carranza and the military leadership of General Álvaro Obregón were the victors in 1915. The revolutionary military men were to continue to dominate Mexico's postrevolutionary period, but the military men who became presidents of Mexico brought the military under civilian control, systematically reining in the power of the military and professionalizing the force. The Mexican military has been under civilian government control with no President of Mexico being military generals since 1946. The fact of Mexico's civilian control of the military is in contrast the situation in many other countries in Latin America.