Juarez became a judge in 1841 and from 1847 to 1852 was Governor of Oaxaca, and made Oaxaca a model State. Juarez joined the liberal monument, which sought constitutional government, reduction of military and clerical power and redistribution of the church's huge land holdings. Exiled in 1853 by the government of Santa Anna, he lived in New Orleans until 1855. When santa Anna kwas overthrown in 1855, Juarez returned to Mexico and became minister of justice. He had the famous Juarez Lawenacted curtailing the pilvlegs of the Mexican clergy. When President Ignacio Comonfort resigned in the face of conservative oppostion to the constitution of 1857, when the liberals won, he was elected president of Mexico in 1861.
As president from 1858, Juarez led the liberals to victory over the conservatives in the War of the Reform and began the nationalization of property owned by the Roman Catholic church. When the French invaded in 1862 Juarez headed the resistance and carried on the struggle until the French imposed empire of Maimillion fell in 1867. Juarez found the government in serious financal difficulty, and stopped payment on European loans for two years. The French used his action as an excise to invade mexico and install Archduke Maximilian as emperor. Juarez directed the war for freedom. In 1866, the United States virtually ordered the French out of Mexico. The French troops withdrew in 1866 and early 1867. Juarez forces captured and executed Maximilian.
Juarez again became president in 1867. He separated church and state, established religious toleration, and altered the land system. He was reelected presedent in 1867 and 1871, cut short his second term. Despite the auto cratic tendencies he displayed in his last years, Juarez is a national hero in Mexico because of his decade long struggle to establish democracy and because of his resistance to the French invaders.
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