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Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori (Spanish pronunciation: [por'firjo di.as]; 15 September 1830 - 2 July 1915) was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of three and a half decades, from 1876 to 1880 and from 1884 to 1911. A veteran of the War of the Reform (1858-60) and the French intervention in Mexico (1862-67), Diaz rose to the rank of General, leading republican troops against the French-imposed rule of Emperor Maximilian. Seizing power in a coup in 1876, Diaz and his allies, a group of technocrats known as "Cientificos", ruled Mexico for the next thirty-five years, a period known as the Porfiriato. Diaz has always been a controversial figure in Mexican history; while the Porfirian regime brought stability after decades of conflict, it grew unpopular due to civil repression and political stagnation.

As a Liberal military hero, Diaz had ambitions for national political power. He challenged the civilian president Benito Juarez, who was running for what Diaz considered an illegal subsequent term as president. In 1870, Diaz ran against President Juarez and Vice President Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada. In 1871, he made claims of fraud in the July elections won by Juarez, who was confirmed as president by the Congress in October. In response, Diaz launched the Plan de la Noria on 8 November 1871, supported by a number of rebellions across the nation, including one by Manuel Gonzalez of Tamaulipas, but this rebellion failed. Following the death of Juarez of natural causes in 1872, Lerdo became president. Lerdo offered amnesty to rebels, which Diaz accepted and took up residency in Veracruz. In 1874, Diaz served in the legislature, representing Veracruz. Opposition to the presidency of Lerdo grew, particularly as anti-clericalism increased, labor unrest grew, and a major rebellion of the Yaqui in northwest Mexico under the leadership of Cajeme challenged central government rule there. Diaz saw an opportunity to plot a more successful rebellion, leaving Mexico in 1875 for New Orleans and Brownsville, Texas with his political ally Manuel Gonzalez. When Lerdo declared he was running for re-election in 1876, Diaz once again had the pretext of the principle of no-reelection to support his opposition. He issued the Plan of Tuxtepec (a town in Oaxaca) as a call to arms against Lerdo. When Lerdo was re-elected in July 1876, rebellion and unrest both before and after the election forced Lerdo from office. In November 1876, Diaz occupied Mexico City, Lerdo left Mexico for exile in New York. Diaz did not take formal control of the presidency until the beginning of 1877, putting General Juan N. Mendez as provisional president, followed by new presidential elections in 1877 that gave Diaz the presidency. Ironically, one of his government's first amendments to the 1857 liberal constitution was to prevent re-election. Although the liberals had defeated the conservatives in the War of the Reform, the conservatives had been powerful enough still in the early 1860s to aid the imperial project of France that put Maximilian Habsburg as emperor of Mexico. With the fall of Maximilian, Mexican conservatives were cast as collaborators with foreign imperialists. With the return of the liberals under Benito Juarez, and following his death, liberals held power, but basic liberal goals of democracy, rule of law, and economic development were not reached. Diaz saw his task in his term as president to create internal order so that economic development could be possible. As a military hero and astute politician, Diaz's eventual successful establishment of that peace (Pax Porfiriana) became "one of [Diaz's] principal achievements, and it became the main justification for successive re-elections after 1884." CANNOTANSWER

Porfirio Díaz