La Reforma

On 23 November 1855, the Ley Juárez, named after the Minister of Justice Benito Juárez, abolished the jurisdiction that military and ecclesiastical courts previously had over purely civil cases.[7] Liberals criticized the existence of both courts for being biased towards their defendants. In the case of the ecclesiastical courts, their jurisdiction extended even to tenants living on extensive church-owned land, and creditors could not sue such tenants in civil court.[8] Conservatives accused the government of hypocrisy for acting on the pretext of establishing legal equality for all, while maintaining the legal immunity that existed for members of the government.[9]

Further dissension within liberal ranks led to Álvarez resigning in December 1856, and handing the presidency over to the more moderate Comonfort, who chose a new cabinet.

In June 1856, another major controversy emerged over the promulgation of the Ley Lerdo, named after the secretary of the treasury, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, brother of fellow Liberal, and future President of Mexico, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. The law was aimed at the collective or corporate ownership of real estate. It forced 'civil or ecclesiastical institutions' to sell any land that they owned, with the tenants getting priority and generous terms for buying the land that they lived on. It was not only aimed at the Catholic Church, which held considerable real estate, but also at Mexico's indigenous communities that were forced to sell their communally-held lands, the ejidos.[13]

On 1 July, José Lázaro de la Garza y Ballesteros protested to the government that the properties were likely to be bought by a few rich individuals, argued that the church had previously lent to the government during crises, and defended the church's record of treating tenants more generously than private owners. Minister of Justice Ezequiel Montes received him courteously, but the protests resulted in no change in government policy[14] José Julián Tornel wrote a pamphlet defending the church's role as both lender and landlord, warning that the private market in both fields would be much less generous to the public.[15]

The law was designed to develop Mexico's economy by increasing the amount of private property owners, but in practice the land was bought up by rich speculators. Most of the lost Indian lands went to haciendas.[16][17]

One of the major issues brought up during the constituent congress was that of religious toleration. The Catholic religion had been one of the three leading principles in the Plan of Iguala. Subsequently, Mexico was founded as and remained a confessional state with Catholicism as the sole religion permitted ever since the Constitution of 1824.

Deputy Lafragua, a liberal[18] and one of Comonfort's ministers, actually argued against religious toleration, making the case that the nation was not ready for it, and feared the measure would simply provoke social upheaval.[19] Concerns about affecting social cohesion by removing the exclusivity of Catholicism were an important theme during the debates on the topic.[20]

A notable issue being brought up by proponents of religious toleration was that it would promote European immigration. LaFragua assured the congress that he was a proponent of immigration, but he made the case that it was not the lack of religious toleration that impeded immigration but rather the lack of security and good roads. Liberal Deputy Mata argued that religious intolerance was the only obstacle in the way of European immigration, and cited the case of a group of German colonists, consisting of thirty thousand families considering immigrating to Mexico in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, and yet ultimately opted to go to the United States due to Mexico's lack of both religious freedom and trial by jury. Deputy Francisco Zarco argued that European settlement of Mexican California could have prevented the United States from annexing that territory. He defended Deputy Mata's claims on German immigration and added his own experience in working with the Prussian minister to highlight the importance of religious toleration to the immigration question.[21]

The issue of religious toleration was referred back to a committee in August 1855, and the question was ultimately shelved by January 1856.[22] The new constitution would ultimately not explicitly promise freedom of religion, yet in contrast to previous constitutions, it did not declare Catholicism the sole religion of the land, leading to a de facto state of religious freedom.

Liberals posing with a copy of the Constitution of 1857.

The Constitution of 1857 was finally promulgated in 5 February. It was nominally federalist, granting the states an element of sovereignty, yet it also gave the federal government more powers than the previous federalist Constitution of 1824. Congress was given the ability to impeach state governors.[23] The previously bicameral congress was also made unicameral in order to discard the conservative leaning upper house,[24] but also in the hopes that a single united chamber could be stronger against any autocratic tendencies coming from the executive branch.[25] National elections were made indirect, the public choosing electors from their district who subsequently chose the congressmen, the president, and members of the supreme court.

There were also many liberal guarantees such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of education, freedom to bear arms, and a reiteration of Mexico's prohibition of slavery.[25] Article 123 of the Constitution read that “the federal government retains the exclusive right to exercise, in the matters of religious practice and external discipline, whatever intervention may be designated by the laws,”[26] leading critics to ponder the exact meaning of this, and to believe that the government intended to interfere in Catholic worship.[27]

The constitution also made itself inviolable, asserting itself binding even amidst an armed insurrection, as Mexico had experienced multiple times before.[28] The constitution also codified the Ley Juarez and the Ley Lerdo.[29]

As an effort to radically change the nation while still attempting to be a compromise, the constitution managed to alienate both liberals and conservatives. Melchor Ocampo, and Ignacio Ramirez both expressed dissatisfaction with the document as not progressive enough. According to Mexican historian Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, President Comonfort "did not accept the Constitution in his heart."[3] Conservatives continued to decry the Ley Lerdo. On 5 February 1857, the deputies of the constituent congress and the president proclaimed the constitution, and swore an oath to it, though the document was not meant to take force until 16 September. Among those present was former president and now elderly Valentin Gomez Farias who had first attempted similar reforms two decades previously.

On 17 March 1857, it was decreed that all civil servants had to publicly swear and sign and oath to the constitution.[30] On 13 November, the Catholic Church, which had not until then taken a formal stand on the constitution, ordered the clergy to not swear allegiance to it. As for Catholic parishioners, swearing allegiance would result in excommunication. Anyone who had taken Church property under the Ley Lerdo was also excommunicated. Civil servants swearing fealty were to resign. A public retraction of fealty would restore their standing. Most government employees did take the oath; a few were fired for refusing. In the Church's view, if a Catholic "persisted in following civil authority, he was doomed to hell."[31]

The Franco-Mexican and liberal paper Trait d'Union now proclaimed that war had been declared between church and state and featured stories on who had refused the oath, including judges and other federal civil servants. The press also noted many cases of minor and local officials also refusing the oath. Others retracted their oaths to be able to receive the sacraments during Lent, which had begun that year shortly after the decree.[32]

Liberal officials struck back at opposition to the oath and to the constitution. Governor Juárez of Oaxaca expelled all priests who refused Catholic burial to supporters of the constitution. In Aguascalientes, vice-governor Lopez de Nava also cracked down on those refusing to take the oath by depriving them of political rights. Governor Miguel Cástulo Alatriste of Puebla outright ordered public prayers for the success of the constitutional authorities.[33]

Amidst armed uprisings and rumors of conspiracy, on 3 November, Congress granted president Comonfort autocratic powers to maintain order, and suspended among others the constitutional clauses on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to bear arms and the suspensions to remain in effect until 30 April 1858.[34] Comonfort meanwhile had won the 1857 presidential election, and assumed his term as constitutional president on 1 December.

On 17 December, General Felix Zuloaga, from the outskirts of Mexico City proclaimed the Plan of Tacubaya, declaring the Constitution of 1857 as not in accord with the customs of the Mexican nation, and which offered to give supreme power to President Comonfort, who was to convoke a new constituent congress to produce a new constitution that was to be approved by a national plebiscite before coming into effect. The same day, congress condemned the plan and deposed Comonfort from the presidency. Zuloaga's troops entered the capital on 18 December and dissolved congress. The following day, Comonfort accepted the role as proposed by Plan of Tacubaya, and released a manifesto making the case that more moderate reforms were needed under the current circumstances.[35]

The subsequent civil war would rage until December, 1860. Throughout the conflict there would be more measures from the liberal authorities aimed at the church, against opponents of the constitution, and attempts to build upon the reforms that had been attempted throughout the Constitution of 1857.

On 16 June 1859, governor of Zacatecas, Jesús González Ortega passed severe decrees aimed at any priest agitating against the Constitution of 1857, prescribing the death penalty for acts including denying the sacraments to those Catholics that had taken the oath of fealty to the constitution. The death penalty was even applied to laymen who agreed to serve as witnesses for those who wished to prove that they had retracted their oaths to the constitution.[38]

In July 1859, at the urging of, Minister Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, President Juarez decreed outright nationalization of all church property, including land, church buildings, and even the interior furnishings. Legal pretexts were sought in the old Spanish system of law by which church property had been held in trust for the crown, whose authority over such church wealth the government argued, had now passed down to the Mexican Republic.[39] Cemeteries were nationalized and civil marriage was instituted. Liberal generals now stripped churches of all valuables such as precious metals and gems to sell for the war effort. Sacred icons and relics were tossed into bonfires as demonstrations against superstition.[40] The war would end in December 1860, with the liberals triumphant.

At the instigation of Mexican monarchist exiles, using Juarez' 1861 suspension of foreign debts as a pretext, and with the American Civil War preventing the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon III invaded Mexico in 1862, and sought local help in setting up a client state. Seeing this as an opportunity to undo the Reform, conservative generals and statesmen joined the French and invited Habsburg archduke Maximilian to become Emperor of Mexico. Emperor Maximilian however proved to be of liberal inclination, he ratified the Reform Laws with religious freedom being maintained and sales of church property continuing. Juarezeless, he still was willing to declare Catholicism the state religion with clergy being paid by the state after the custom of European Catholic monarchies. Negotiations with the Papal Nuncio stalled and the matter was referred back to the Vatican. Regardless of the Emperor's liberal intentions, the government of Benito Juárez, still resisted and fought the French and Mexican Imperial forces with the backing of the United States, whom after the end of the Civil War could now once again enforce the Monroe Doctrine. The French eventually withdrew, leading the monarchy to collapse in 1867. The liberals returned to power, in a period known as the Restored Republic (1867-1876), often considered the end date of the Reform Era.[11]

• Act of September 25, 1874

Liberals sought economic development under the assumption that the economy would flourish if the structure of landholding would re-ordered. For this reason, they targeted the corporate holdings of the Catholic Church and indigenous communities that held ownership in common. Liberals saw both as stumbling blocks to economic development, which they envisioned as the creation of a class of small-scale yeoman farmers. They targeted indigenous communities' material support since they sought to transform indigenous from being ethnically, socially, and economically separate from Mexico, seeking to make them individual citizens of the secular Mexican nation-state rather than members of their community. Breaking up collective indigenous community landholdings and giving community members a chance to purchase parcels held as private property was a failure. Individual community members did not have the capital to purchase such holdings, so that the buyers were largely well-off non-indigenous who could now acquire land suddenly on the market. Many buyers were large estate owners who could expand the holdings, but a number were liberals. Although liberals sought to undermine the economic power of the Church by the forced sale of property, much of their property was urban and not rural. Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, author of the Lerdo Law, purchased disentailed Church property in Veracruz for 33,000 pesos, a significant sum. Other liberals also acquired disentailed property worth over 20,000 pesos, including Ignacio Comonfort, José María Iglesias, Juan Antonio de la Fuente, and Manuel Payno. The land reform did not stimulate industrial development with capital now freed from investment in real estate; and it did not result in improvements in rural property since many buyers exhausted their capital on the purchase price itself. The Reform did create an expanded base of urban property owners who bought Church-owned property. Since economic development remained a liberal goal, the disappointing lack of industrial development from domestic capital meant that pursue the program liberals had to look to foreign investors and a situation of economic dependency.[41]

A fundamental and lasting reform was the Mexican state's commitment to free, mandatory, public, secular education. Schooling had been in the hands of the Catholic Church and targeted male elites for training as doctors, priests, and lawyers. Liberals saw education as the way to transform the lives of Mexicans by stressing literacy and numeracy for all as a means to create better citizens. Juárez viewed education as "the cornerstone of prosperity of a people; at the same time, it is the most effective way to make abuses of power impossible." They considered it the most effective way to better Mexico was to have an educated and informed citizenry that would strengthen Mexican democracy and provide a path to upward mobility for Mexicans. Benito Juárez's story of being an orphaned illiterate indigenous person rising to the presidency of Mexico was the embodiment of the power of education. When the liberals came to power, schools of any kind were few and concentrated in urban centers. The importance of education to the liberal project is indicated in Article 3 of the Constitution of 1857 embedding education as a top goal. Only after the turmoil of the Reform War and then the French Intervention were liberals able to begin implementing the expansion of public education.[42]

The Reform created a modern nation-state that undermined the institutional power of the Roman Catholic Church. The liberals destroyed the charitable functions of the Church, such as aid to the poor and hospitals. The state assumed no charitable functions at the time, abandoning the social welfare of the poor to the forces of exploitation. The Reform also destroyed the material basis of indigenous communities so that members no longer had access to cultivable lands and undermined the communities as functioning social entities. The Church and indigenous communities continued to exist, but their power was much curtailed by the ascendancy of the liberal nation-state.[43]

The liberals were successful in creating a lasting legal framework for reforms in the Constitution of 1857. The unsuccessful conservative challenges to the Reform meant that after 1867, liberals were entirely in control. Although liberals had hoped to create a democracy with protections for individual rights, they instead established a constitutional dictatorship under Juárez, Lerdo, and Díaz, who established political machines to ensure their continuance in power.[44] Historical memory in Mexico created new national heroes, but prominently Benito Juárez. Others were Melchor Ocampo, General Ignacio Zaragoza, and Miguel and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, Guillermo Prieto, and Vicente Riva Palacio. The Constitutionalists, winning faction of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) fought in defense of the Constitution of 1857. Once they consolidated power, they promulgated a new constitution to remedy problems of the Constitution of 1857 and create a legal framework to implement revolutionary changes which many had fought for. "Political liberalism became the dominant ideology and has continued to be the 'official' ideology today."[45]