La Reforma

Alegoría de la Constitución

The Liberal Reform is usually considered to have begun with the overthrow and exile of President Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Revolution of Ayutla in 1854-55. There is less consensus about the end point of the Reform. Common dates are 1861, after the liberal victory in the War of the Reform, 1867, after the Republican victory of the French intervention in Mexico and 1876 after the Rebellion of Tuxtepec in which liberal general Porfirio Díaz overthrew president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. A number of historians have called the period following the ouster of the French in 1867 the Restored Republic, when Benito Juárez returned to full power as the president of Mexico, rather than being essentially a president in exile during the French Intervention. Juárez was succeeded after his death in office by Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. In the Cambridge History of Latin America, Jan Bazant includes the liberal reform as part of the early post-independence period and ends with the French Intervention in 1867.[2] Historian Friedrich Katz's article in the Cambridge History of Latin America, "The Liberal Republic and the Porfiriato, 1867-1910", overlaps with Bazant's, with neither calling the era "The Reform."[3] Brian Hamnett, author of a biography of Benito Juárez considers the Reform era to be from 1855 to 1876[4] as does Paul Vanderwood.[5] In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, the reform is treated in a section entitled "Two Centuries of Independence" with one article on "Republicans and Monarchists"[6] and the other contrasting civilian rule of Juárez and Lerdo with General Díaz.[7] The first three volumes of the Historia Moderna de México (1955-), under the editorship of Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villegas begin with the Restored Republic (República Restaurada). The framing of the era by Cosío Villegas is the subject of academic study.[8] Liberal general Porfirio Díaz ousted liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada in 1876, remaining in power practically continuously until 1911, in a period known as the Porfiriato, often treated separately from the earlier liberal era. The Porfiriato ended with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The Constitutionalists, the winning faction of the Mexican Revolution, fought in the name of the liberal Constitution of 1857.

The law prohibiting the ownership of land by corporations, the Lerdo Law, targeted the holdings of the Catholic Church and indigenous communities - confiscating Church land. Indigenous community lands were held by the community as a whole, not as individual parcels. Liberals sought to create a class of yeoman farmers that held land individually. No class of individualistic peasants developed with the Liberal program emerged, but many merchants acquired land as well as some tenant farmers. Many existing landowners expanded their holdings at the expense of peasants, and some upwardly mobile ranch owners, often mestizos, acquired land previously held by communities.[9]

The most noteworthy reforms of the Reforma were initially promulgated in a series of separate laws.

• the Ley Lerdo, abolishing corporate property holding by the Catholic Church and indigenous communal properties
• the Ley Juárez, abolishing separate military and religious courts
• the Ley Iglesias, regulating ecclesiastical fees
• the Mexican Constitution of 1857, guaranteeing many civil and political liberties including freedom of religion
• the 'Reform Laws' in which the liberal government of Veracruz during the civil war against the conservatives proclaimed complete separation of church and state.

Mexico City's main avenue is the Paseo de la Reforma which received its current name after the Reforma. It was originally known as the Paseo de la Emperatriz after Empress Carlota, the consort of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico who created the avenue for her.

• Reform laws
• Liberalism in Mexico
• Constitution of 1857
• War of the Reform (1857–1861)
• French intervention in Mexico (1861–1867)
• History of democracy in Mexico