One of the founding ideals for the United States was the separation of church and state. That has always been one of our core values; even most of us to whom religion is extremely important can look at Western history and recognize that the church should not be directly involved in government. Mexico, however, did not have that ideology at its foundation.
The US and Mexico both, in the colonization era, had white people come in and use whatever methods they felt were necessary to force the indigenous people to convert. One of the differences, though, is that when Mexico broke free of Spain, it did not break free of the Catholic Church. And the history of the Catholic Church with the indigenous people of Mexico is not very pleasant.
In comes Benito Juárez, who is partially responsible for drafting La Reforma. The goals of The Reform were to establish legal equality, economic development, and limiting the power of the Catholic Church. He also became the first indigenous president. He lead in the Reform War sparked by La Reforma. The liberal faction, backed by the US, won the war. But the conservative faction was backed by Europe. Mexico also had debts to Europe it couldn’t pay. So after the Reform War came the French Invasion… Well, the Second French Invasion. I don’t think France was happy that the colonial era ended. Since the conservative faction had just lost the Reform War, they joined forces with France. Together, they established an Empire in Mexico.
An Empire which only lasted three years before Juárez took back the country and reestablished the Republic. He executed the emperor to send a clear message to the world: Mexico will not tolerate foreign rulers. His actions with La Reforma and the wars to follow are why we celebrate his birthday every year.
Please realize, though, that this is an extreme over-simplification of the events that occurred. If you want to know more about what happened, please do some research! Here’s a website from the Mexican government to get you started!
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