page_title: Benito Juárez
section_title: Early political career in Oaxaca
hierarchical_section_title: Benito Juárez / Political career / Early political career in Oaxaca
caption_attribution_description: English: Valentín Gómez Farías, President of Mexico
context_page_description: Benito Pablo Juárez García was a Mexican lawyer and politician, who served as the 26th president of Mexico from 1858 until his death in 1872. He was the first president of Mexico who was of indigenous origin. Born in Oaxaca to a poor Zapotec rural family and orphaned young, he moved to Oaxaca City at the age of 12 to go to school. He was aided by a lay Franciscan, and enrolled in seminary, later studying law at Institute of Sciences and Arts and becoming a lawyer. After being appointed as a judge, in his 30s he married Margarita Maza, a socially prominent woman of Oaxaca City. From his years in college, he was active in politics. Appointed as head justice of the nation's Supreme Court, Juárez identified primarily as a Liberal politician. In his life, he wrote briefly about his indigenous heritage.
  When moderate liberal President Ignacio Comonfort was forced to resign by the Conservatives in 1858, Juárez, as head of the Supreme Court, assumed the presidency and the two governments competed. His succession was codified in the Constitution of 1857 but he survived in internal exile for a period.
context_section_description: Juárez's experiences in political life in Oaxaca were crucial to his later success as a leader. His political affiliation with liberalism developed at the Institute of Arts and Science and his ability to rise in Oaxaca state politics was due to the lack of an entrenched political class of criollos, Mexicans of European descent. The relative openness of the system allowed him and other newcomers to enter politics and gain patronage. He developed a political base and gained an understanding of political maneuvering. 
  Following Juárez's graduation as a lawyer in 1834, law practice, and service as a civil judge in 1841, he became part of the Oaxaca state government, led by liberal governor Antonio León (1841–1845). He became a prosecutor in the Oaxaca state court and was elected to the state legislature in 1845. 
  Juárez was subsequently elected to the federal legislature, where he supported Valentín Gómez Farías, who instigated liberal reforms including limitations on the power of the Catholic Church. With the return to the presidency of Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1847, Juárez returned to his practice in Oaxaca. 
  He was elected governor of the state of Oaxaca, serving from 1847 to 1852. During his tenure as governor, Juárez supported the war effort against the U.S. in the Mexican–American War. Recognizing that the war was lost, he refused Santa Anna's request to regroup and raise new forces. This, as well as his objections to the corrupt military dictatorship of Santa Anna, resulted in his going into exile in New Orleans in 1853, where he worked in a cigar factory. His wife sent him some of her own money there to help with his support. Other Santa Anna opponents were also in exile there, including Melchor Ocampo of Michoacan, who was fiercely anticlerical. 
  In 1854, Juárez helped draft the liberals' Plan of Ayutla, a document calling for Santa Anna's being deposed and for a convention to draft a new constitution. Faced with growing opposition, Santa Anna was forced to resign in 1855.
caption: Valentin Gómez Farías, who instigated a liberal reform in 1833, which Juárez supported
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