The Era of Porfirio Diaz, 1876-1911

Introduction

Porfirio Díaz (b. 1830–d. 1915) had a brilliant military career that included participating in the Mexican victory over the French at the battle of Puebla, now celebrated as the Cinco de Mayo (5 May 1862) holiday, and in driving the Emperor Maximilian’s troops out of Mexico City in 1867. The latter victory helped restore the Liberal regime, and with peace, Díaz turned to politics. He was largely unsuccessful until 1876, when his uprising, called the Revolution of Tuxtepec, enabled him to win the presidency. He dominated Mexico for the next thirty-five years until forced into exile in Paris by revolutionaries in 1911. His successful political regime accounts for naming the era for him. The telenovela (television soap opera series) El Vuelo del Águila (1994), with 140 thirty-minute episodes, created tremendous popular interest in this era. Enrique Krauze, Mexico’s premier public historian, created the project for national television; it was directed by Jorge Fons and Gonzalo Martínez and starred Manuel Ojeda as Porfirio. The telenovela caused a sensation and excited great curiosity about the era on its own terms, rather than as the cause of the revolution. Historians have to some extent responded to this curiosity about the era. The published evaluations of the Porfirian regime have gone through three major phases, from the appearance of panegyrics during the era itself, to studies of its policies as provocations for the revolution of 1910, to the appearance of professional scholarship evaluating the period and its successes and failures. The last phase, dating from the 1950s, has benefitted in the 1990s and 2000s from the availability of major archival collections, notably the archive of Porfirio Díaz; the archive of Rafael Chousal, his personal secretary while president; and the archive of José Limantour, his successful secretary of the treasury. More recently, many scholars have undertaken analyses using the methodologies of cultural history, focusing on crime, ethnicity, gender, civic celebrations, and public diversions as a way to discuss everyday life and to incorporate the women, Indians, and working people of the era into the historical narrative. As of 2011 a number of these significant investigations are only available as unpublished dissertations; this will likely change in the near future.

General Overviews

The modern professional scholarship on the era of Porfirio Díaz (called the Porfiriato) began with Cosío Villegas 1955–1972, the multivolume analysis of the regime. Ortoll and Piccato 2011 is the first-ever investigation of how this now-classic publication came to be and how it was funded. The project inspired Moisés González to compile the first reliable volume of social statistics for the period that complements the texts, Estadísticas sociales del porfiriato, 1877–1910. Biographies of the long-time president have, by necessity, offered general examinations of his regime. The best two examples are Beals 1932 and the more recent and excellent Garner 2001. Coerver 1979 adds a significant biography of Manuel González, who served one term during the Díaz presidential era. Tenorio Trillo and Gómez Galvarriato 2008 is the best available survey of the historiography of the era.

Beals, Carleton. Porfirio Díaz: Dictator of Mexico. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1932.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This journalist, who formed part of the international intellectual community in Mexico City in the 1920s and 1930s, unfortunately provides no sources for his narrative. Beals sees Díaz as a dictator whose regime provided the principal cause of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, and he offers a good deal of general information in a well-written biography.
Find this resource:
Coerver, Don. The Porfirian Interregnum: The Presidency of Manuel González of Mexico, 1880–1884. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The standard biography of the only president other than Porfirio Díaz during the thirty-five year regime that spanned from 1876 to 1911. Coerver provides a detailed discussion of the developmental programs González pushed through the national legislature, such as the promotion of mining, railroads, and commercial agriculture, that reshaped the country’s economy.
Find this resource:
Cosío Villegas, Daniel. Historia Moderna de México. 9 vols. Mexico City: Editorial Hermes, 1955–1972.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This classic remains the standard work on the Porfirian regime. It includes three volumes on Benito Juárez’s restoration of national government in 1867 after the French occupation, through the Liberal regimes until 1876. The seven volumes devoted to the Porfirian government examine politics, economics, foreign relations, and social life.
Find this resource:
Garner, Paul. Díaz: Profile in Power Series. New York: Longman, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Best available one-volume biography of Díaz and analysis of his regime. Garner also provides an insightful commentary on the historiography of the man and his regime. Available in both English and Spanish.
Find this resource:
González Navarro, Moisés, ed. Estadísticas sociales del porfiriato, 1877–1910. Mexico City: Secretaría de Economía, Dirección General de Estadística, 1956.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the essential compilation of statistics for the Porfirian years. The editor also wrote the volume on the Porfirian economy in the Cosío Villegas multivolume history.
Find this resource:
Ortoll, Servando, and Pablo Piccato. “A Brief History of the Historia Moderna de México.” In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Edited by William H. Beezley, 339–360. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444340600Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A valuable analysis of the conception, writing, and funding by the Rockefeller Foundation of Historia Moderna de México.
Find this resource:
Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio, and Aurora Gómez Galvarriato. El Porfiriato. Mexico: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the historiographies in a series titled Herramientas para la historia. This is the most current and analytical of available bibliographies and includes a valuable discussion of archives.
Find this resource:
Introductory Works

Don Daniel, as Cosío Villegas was known to his colleagues, was responsible for the most widely read account of the nation’s past, Nueva historia general de México (first published in 1976), which has included in all of its three editions well-written chapters that provide a superb introduction to the years of Porfirio Díaz (see González 2000 and Kuntz Ficker and Speckman Guerra 2010). Another excellent concise introduction is Buffington and French 2010, a chapter in the Oxford History of Mexico.

Buffington, Robert M., and William E. French. “The Culture of Modernity.” In The Oxford History of Mexico. Edited by William H. Beezley and Michael C. Meyer, 373–406. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors provide a skillful analysis of Díaz and modernization, examining the intellectual, economic, governmental, social, and cultural aspects of his presidential years. The authors also analyze questions of social order, especially gender and crime.
Find this resource:
González, Luis. “El Liberalismo triunfante.” In Historia general de México. 633–706. Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
González follows the basic structure of the Historia Moderna de México, linking the restored regime of Benito Juárez to the thirty-five year authoritarian regime of Porfirio Diaz, and focusing on economic, political, social, and diplomatic issues. This chapter revised what González had initially written for the first edition of the volume in 1976.
Find this resource:
Kuntz Ficker, Sandra, and Elisa Speckman Guerra. “El Porfiriato.” In Nueva historia general de México. 487–536. Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors have completely rewritten this general introduction to the Porfirian regime. Kuntz Ficker and Speckman Guerra, experts in the economic and legal history of the era, respectively, bring an added dimension to this introductory survey. The authors include a valuable section on Porfirian culture. An illustrated edition of this volume with photographs to accompany the Porfirian chapter is Nueva historia general de México.
Find this resource:
Nueva historia general de México. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, Cámara de Diputados, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the most widely read introduction, other than primary school textbooks, to the nation’s history. The first edition from 1976 to 1999 sold over 250,000 copies to high school and university students, teachers, and historians. The second edition, known as Versión 2000, continued to sell well (exact figures are not available), leading to this completely revised edition.
Find this resource:
Ideologies and Technologies of Modernism

The common knowledge repeated in many textbooks finds the ideological basis of the Porfirian regime in a local version of the positivism of Auguste Comte called scientisme, or in Spanish, cientificismo, as described in Zea 1974. This new ideological basis reshaped the prevailing Liberalism of the time, as discussed in Hale 1990. Agostoni 2003 describes how the so-called científicos, with their faith in science, pushed investments in technology to create a modern society and economy. More recent studies have carefully reevaluated científicismo and other ideologies of the Porfirian government officials and economic elites, and have given new dimensions to the adaptation of various technologies by the regime, as discussed in Raat 1975 and Raat 1977. Other studies, especially Raat 1973, have examined ideologies that challenged the regime and have broadened the definition of modernization beyond simply technology.

Agostoni, Claudia. Monuments of Progress: Modernization and Public Health in Mexico. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author explores the way the Porfirians put their ideas of modernism and technology into practice, especially in Mexico City, through new hygienic measures, flood control, and other practical public health efforts that served as monuments to the regime.
Find this resource:
Hale, Charles A. The Transformation of Liberalism in Late 19th Century Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Standard intellectual history of Liberalism during the Porfirian years that places the liberal ideology within the context of both the politics and prevailing positivist beliefs of the time.
Find this resource:
Raat, William Dirk. “Ideas and Society in Don Porfirio’s Mexico.” The Americas 30 (July 1973): 32–53.
DOI: 10.2307/980446Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Excellent survey of ideas and their relationships to socioeconomic groups during this era. The author discusses antipositivism, anticlericalism, reform Darwinism, indigenism, Krausism, and Spencerianism, among others.
Find this resource:
Raat, W. Dirk. El positivismo durante el Porfiriato, 1876–1910. SepSetentas 228. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, Dirección General de Divulgación, 1975.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author, who also goes by William D. Raat, examines the ideas of intellectuals during the Porfiriato. He argues that “Comtean positivism was limited to education,” and cientificismo “was the attitude and belief system of the científicos and others.”
Find this resource:
Raat, William Dirk. “The Antipositivist Movement in Pre-revolutionary Mexico, 1892–1911.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 19 (February 1977): 83–98.
DOI: 10.2307/174862Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Intellectuals critical of the regime addressed urbanization and industrialization, and particularly what they saw as the resulting social issues of drunkenness and prostitution, as well as the political responses of anarchism and socialism.
Find this resource:
Zea, Leopoldo. Positivism in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is a translation of an outstanding volume first published as El positivismo en México in 1943 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México). Zea offers a history of positivism from its introduction in Mexico in 1867 through the Porfiriatio, with attention to its conversion into an intellectual defense of the Díaz regime. In the introduction of this volume, Zea responds to the criticism of US scholars, in particular Charles A. Hale and W. Dirk Raat.
Find this resource:
Society, Class, and Foreign Communities

The political stability and the economic growth promoted by the Porfirian regime resulted in changing social relationships and class formations. In particular, both the upper and middle class worked to define themselves, for the most part in opposition to the working and lower classes in the city and in the countryside, as demonstrated by French 1996 and Macías 1999. Rural workers, in fact, were largely dismissed as Indios, rather than as citizens worthy of education and assistance. In the city, as Toxqui 2000 shows, the lower class used the pulquerías, or bars, as centers of socialization. US, French, English, German, and other smaller colonies existed in the capital city, and the first four of these had a good deal of influence on the Porfirian elites, for example, in fashion, recreation, and consumption—all related to the conspicuous display of social standing, as discussed in Bunker 2006. Schell 2001 provides an excellent case study of the US community in the capital city.

Bunker, Steven B. “Creating a Consumer Society in Porfirian Mexico, 1876–1911.” PhD diss., Texas Christian University, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines consumer practices of the elites and bourgeoisie as expressions of their class identity. Describes the rise of English- and French-owned department stores and the teaching of new shopping practices to consumers. This the first study to consider the consumption side of the modern economy.
Find this resource:
French, William E. A Peaceful and Working People: Manners, Morals, and Class Formation in Northern Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Parral, Chihuahua, serves as a case study of a mining community and the efforts of the middle-class modernizers to reform the daily life of both full-time miners and those of the “floating community” that worked on the railroads, in agriculture, and in mining, depending on employment availability. This is the standard work on emerging middle and working classes in mining regions.
Find this resource:
Macías, Víctor. “The Mexican Aristocracy and Porfirio Díaz, 1876–1911.” PhD diss., Texas Christian University, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The only historical study of the Porfirian aristocracy as a group, through its educational, marriage, recreational, consumer, and social customs. Gives attention to foreign travel and the material culture of these powerful families.
Find this resource:
Schell, William, Jr. Integral Outsiders. The American Colony in Mexico City, 1876–1911.Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a close and detailed analysis, Schell examines the largest group of foreigners in Porfirian Mexico, their investments, their employment as managers, engineers, technicians, and professionals, their recreations, and their marriages to Mexicans. Provides a significant complement to economic histories of U.S. activities and helps explain the influence of U.S. culture.
Find this resource:
Toxqui, Aurea. “Identity, Power and Social Interaction in the Pulquerías of Mexico City during the Liberal Republic, (1857–1910).” PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author analyzes the pulquerias in Mexico City as centers of socialization, especially for the lower classes. Provides insight into the ways that newcomers to the city, the urban floating population, and, at times, criminals used the centers as social clubs, employment exchanges, and forges of identity.
Find this resource:
Economy and Economic History

The president and the Porfirian administration prided themselves on their economic programs that promoted railroads (Coatsworth 1976, Grunstein 1994, Kuntz Ficker 1995, Kuntz Ficker 2007, and Kuntz and Riguzzi 1996, all under Railroads) above all, but also modern mining (Bernstein 1964 and Hart 2008, both under Railroads), commercial agriculture (Wells 1985 and Evans 2007, both under Railroads) suspected of reducing food production (Coatsworth 1976, under Railroads), and a nascent textile industry (Kuntz Ficker 2007, under Railroads). The key to the development program came through the creation of a new constitutional and legal framework to promote capitalistic opportunities and attract foreign investments, as noted in Coatsworth 1978 and Beatty 2003; the success in renegotiating previous international debts, making new foreign loans, and surveying and managing rural lands, as discussed in Holden 1994; and maintaining the autonomy of government officials from private economic designs of Mexican and foreign corporations and powerful entrepreneurs, as discussed in Passananti 2007. Hart 2002 provides the best available evaluation of US investors in Mexico, and Tisdhendorf 1961 surveys British investments.

Beatty, Edward. “Visiones del futuro: La reorientación de la política económica en México, 1867–1893.” Signos Históricos 10 (2003): 39–56.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Beatty contributes to the historiographical argument about the degree of autonomy Porfirian officials had from the influence of both foreign and domestic economic elites. He sees them becoming more independence of these financial individuals later in the regime.
Find this resource:
Bernstein, Marvin D. Mexican Mining Industry, 1890–1950: A Study of the Interaction of Politics, Economics and Technology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1964.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides a thorough examination of mining in the late Porfirian years. This monograph remains the outstanding work on the industry.
Find this resource:
Coatsworth, John H. “Anotaciones sobre la producción de alimentos durante el Porfiriato.” Historia Mexicana 26 (October–December 1976): 167–187.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses statistical sources to demonstrate that Mexicans ate no better or worse in 1907 than they had in 1877. The author concludes that that food production did not decline, and that maize in particular kept pace with the growing population.
Find this resource:
Coatsworth, John H. “Obstacles to Economic Growth in Nineteenth-Century Mexico.” American Historical Review 83.1 (February 1978): 80–100.
DOI: 10.2307/1865903Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author gives attention to the constitutional and legal restraints that obstructed programs of economic growth and capitalist development, and the Porfirian efforts to change them.
Find this resource:
Hart, John M. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
No historian has researched so exhaustively the archives of investors, businesses, and government records in the United States and Mexico. Hart provides an unequalled description of US investment in land, agriculture, mining, railroads, and industry in Mexico, particularly during the Porfirian regime.
Find this resource:
Hart, John M. The Silver of the Sierra Madre: John Robinson, Boss Shepherd, and the People of the Canyons. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Case study of US investors in the Chihuahua silver mine Batopilas, and the responses of the local indigenous peoples. Contains an account of the activities of Boss Shepard, who fled Washington, DC, to avoid prosecution for corrupt political and economic practices. Well-written narrative.
Find this resource:
Holden, Robert H. Mexico and the Survey of Public Lands: The Management of Modernization, 1876–1911. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This investigation provides significant information on the Porfirian government programs for both the survey and distribution of lands and offers a case study of government autonomy from the influence of domestic economic elites, as officials operated with national interests in mind.
Find this resource:
Passananti, Thomas. “‘Nada de Papeluchos!’ Managing Globalization in Early Porfirian Mexico.” Latin American Research Review 42.3 (2007): 101–128.
DOI: 10.1353/lar.2007.0045Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is one of the few investigations of banking and financial practices during the Porfirian years. The author argues that the Porfirians, despite the nation’s defaulted international loans from earlier in the century, managed to secure loans and act with a good deal of autonomy both with international financial sources and with the local elites. He extends the thesis presented in Kuntz Ficker and Riguzzi 1966 (cited under Railroads).
Find this resource:
Tisdhendorf, Alfred. Great Britain and Mexico in the Era of Porfirio Díaz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1961.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Despite the title, this work focuses on British investors in the Mexican economy after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations in 1878. The British lost their commercial preeminence to the United States but remained a significant source of capital for railroads, mines, properties, and, later, petroleum and urban utilities. The appendix provides information on some British companies.
Find this resource:
Railroads

The development of a railroad network became the most significant economic program of the Porfirian regime and the measure of its success. Coatsworth 1981, using the sophisticated methodology of cliometrics, evaluates the impact of the railroads on the national economy, and Grunstein 1994 examines the critical development of government policies to manage railroad construction and relationships with foreign investors. Kuntz Ficker 2007 is from the most prominent scholar now working on the railroad question. Kuntz Flicker 1995 places railroads into the general economic history of the nation and examines the growth of an internal market, and Kuntz Ficker and Riguzzi 1996 offers an overall evaluation of the railroads in the Porfirian economy.

Coatsworth, John H. Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using econometric methodology, Coatsworth concludes that the railroads did not stimulate economic growth in the same way they did in countries with more developed industries, because railroads primarily shipped raw materials out of Mexico and most Mexicans could not afford to become passengers. Coatsworth gives attention to land appropriations for the railroads and agrarian protests in response.
Find this resource:
Grunstein, Arturo. “Railroads and Sovereignty: Policy-making in Porfirian Mexico.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This dissertation carefully delineates the balance that government officials tried to achieve between railroad expansion with foreign investments and their commitment to national sovereignty. The author offers a reminder that many government leaders, including the president, were officers who had fought during the French Intervention, and they were not about to sell the country over to foreigners.
Find this resource:
Kuntz Ficker, Sandra. Empresa extranjera y mercado interno: El Ferrocarril Central Mexicano, 1880–1907. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Outstanding investigation of the Mexican Central Railroad, the symbol of Porfirian modernization, and, in the eyes of many Porfirian officials, a model for national development.
Find this resource:
Kuntz Ficker, Sandra. El comercio exterior de México en la era del capitalismo liberal, 1870–1929. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Kuntz Ficker is the leading historian studying the economic impact of railroads, silver mining, and foreign investment during the Porifiran era. This outstanding volume focuses on the developmental aspects of the regime’s economic policies and also the obstacles to economic growth that existed before and after the Porfirian presidency.
Find this resource:
Kuntz Ficker, Sandra, and Paolo Riguzzi. Ferrocarriles y vida económica en México. Mexico City: El Colegio Mexiquense, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this examination of the railroads, Kuntz Ficker argues that Porfirian government officials acted with a good deal of autonomy from both foreign and domestic economic elites to shape nationalistic developmental policies. Passananti 2007 (cited under Economy and Economic History), in an investigation of Porfirian banking and finance, extends this argument. The argument receives additional support in Holden 1994and Beatty 2003 (also cited under Economy and Economic History).
Find this resource:
Case Studies for Chihuaua and Yucatán

These case studies offer examples of the Porfirian economic policies in operation. Evans 2007 and Wells 1985 examine the striking situation in Yucatán, where the henequen industry, developed by foreign corporations, resulted in the growth of a cosmopolitan local aristocracy known for its lavish displays of consumption and repression of plantation workers. Wasserman 1979 and Wasserman 1984 provide the best available studies of Luis Terrazas and his political, social, and economic activities in Chihuahua. His estate, the largest in Latin America, provided profits that he used in banking, industrial and other enterprises.

Evans, Sterling D. Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880–1950. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Most thorough account available of the web of interests connecting Yucatán’s industry during the Porfiriato to North American agriculture. Gives equal attention to the Mexican industry, land owners, and repressed workers and to the market dominated by International Harvester in the United States and Canada.
Find this resource:
Wasserman, Mark. “Foreign Investment in Mexico, 1876–1910: A Case Study of Regional Elites.” The Americas 36 (July 1979): 3–21.
DOI: 10.2307/981135Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the relationships between regional elites and foreign investors that had the effect of strengthening the former. The authors focus on the Terrazas family, with its patriarch Luis in Chihuahua as a case study.
Find this resource:
Wasserman, Mark. Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: the Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Model economic case study focuses on Luis Terrazas and his extended family, the largest landholder in Porfirian Mexico, and a dynamic group of entrepreneurs in cattle raising, food processing, investment banking, imports and exports, and general commerce.
Find this resource:
Wells, Allen. Yucatan’s Gilded Age: Haciendas, Henequen, and International Harvester, 1860–1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Wells examines Yucatán’s aristocracy, which relied on the export of henequen used for binder twine, especially in the United States and Canada. The author offers a case study of foreign investor and local elite cooperation, international markets, and worker exploitation through virtual slavery.
Find this resource:
Crime and Punishment, Soldiers and Constabularies

The guiding dictum of the Porfirian regime, taken from the writings of the French Positivists, was “order and progress.” Mexican leaders saw their first duty as the creation of both political and social order by implementing the Penal Code of 1871, as discussed in Sloan 2011, with rigorous enforcement and strict punishment of those found guilty, as discussed in Buffington 2000 and Buffington and Piccato 2009. The outstanding survey of these topics for the Porfiriato is Speckman 2002. Neufeld 2009 and Neufeld 2011 discuss the army, Vanderwood 1992 discusses the rural constabulary, and Picatto 2001 discusses the newly created police force that kept the peace according to guidelines that clearly delineate the cosmopolitan, social Darwinist, ethnic, and class attitudes that comprised both the epistemology and the ideology of Porfirian officials. Speckman 2011 offers an excellent survey of the literature on the topics of crime, punishment, and justice for the era.

Buffington, Robert M. Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author examines the official definitions of crime and criminals as opposed to citizens of modern Mexico. He explores classic, scientific, and popular criminology to capture the changing nature of determining criminality and identifying criminals as anyone who threatened the social order.
Find this resource:
Buffington, Robert, and Pablo Piccato, eds. True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An outstanding group of scholars examine in detail murders, assassinations, and insanity during the Porfirian era and the revolution. The editors set out to test the provocative conclusions of sociologist Emile Durkheim, including his argument that crime is a normal part of society. The editors also explore the interpretation that crime stories create publics, or imagined communities shaped by the media reports.
Find this resource:
Neufeld, Stephen. “Servants of the Nation: The Military in the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876–1911.” PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The most complete study available of the Porfirian army, with information from personnel files and other records in the Archivo Militar on both officers and enlisted men. It examines the gender relationships, corruption charges, modern armament, and official training of soldiers and their effort to establish national order.
Find this resource:
Neufeld, Stephan. “The Military and Nation, 1821 to 1916.” In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Edited by William H. Beezley, 390–404. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444340600Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Historiographical discussion of the Mexican military, with a good deal of attention to Porfirio Díaz’s army and a mention of the navy.
Find this resource:
Piccato, Pablo. City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Modern criminologists during the Porfirian years, Piccato explains, in many cases created modern criminals of the poor and working class migrants to the city. The programs of punishment did not rehabilitate prisoners but hardened them as they were placed in new criminal categories. This volume is significant for carrying through the discussion into the revolutionary years.
Find this resource:
Sloan, Kathryn. “The Penal Code of 1871: From Religious to Civil Control of Everyday Life.” In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Edited by William H. Beezley, 302–315. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444340600Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This essay provides an essential starting point for an understanding law, crime, and justice during the Profirian years. The author provides a combination of both a narrative of the civil code and a discussion of its historiography.
Find this resource:
Speckman, Elisa. Crimen y castigo: Legislación penal, interpretaciones de la criminalidad y administración de justicia (Ciudad de México, 1872–1910). Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas/El Colegio de México, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Recognized as the standard work on crime and punishment in the Porfirian years, this study provides the intellectual and administrative context for the identification of criminals and the enforcement and punishment procedures developed during the Porfirian regime.
Find this resource:
Speckman, Elisa. “Disorder and Control: Crime, Justice and Punishment in Porfirian and Revolutionary Society.” In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Edited by William H. Beezley, 371–389. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444340600Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comparison and analysis of crimes during these two periods. The essay also provides a discussion of the historiography of crime by the leading Mexican scholar on crime and punishment.
Find this resource:
Vanderwood, Paul. Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police and Mexican Development. Rev. ed. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Careful analysis of Porfirio’s rural constabulary. In a well-written narrative, the author revises the folklore of the rurales and dismisses many of the myths about them, for example, that they were former bandits.
Find this resource:
Examples of Enforcement

The Porfirian enforcement of order and progress involved the exercise of force by the police in the city, as noted in Garza 2007, and by the army and rurales in the countryside, as noted in Vanderwood 1998. But there was more to it than force. As part of the campaign to create social order, the Porfirians defined criminal behavior and identified the insane, as discussed in Rivera Garza 2010, and increased governmental control of rural areas through military surveys, as discussed in Craib 2004.

Craib, Raymond B. Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
For Porfirian administrators, the knowledge necessary for maintaining order and promoting progress required knowing the nation’s landscapes and physical geography. The army’s role in surveying the countryside to provide this knowledge demonstrates another side to the Porfirian program to impose order and discipline on the national society.
Find this resource:
Garza, James Alex. The Imagined Underworld: Sex, Crime, and Vice in Porfirian Mexico City. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of six sensational crimes in Porfirian Mexico as a way to understand the Porfirian enforcement effort, which had several motives: to identify crime, define social classes, and promote cosmopolitan claims of the government.
Find this resource:
Rivera Garza, Christina. La Castañeda. Narrativas dolientes desde el Manicomio General, 1910–1930. Mexico City: Tusquets, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This investigation provides some information on the treatment of insanity at the end of the Porfiriato into the first decades of the revolution. The author discusses in detail the social construction of medical conditions and behavior deemed insane.
Find this resource:
Vanderwood, Paul. The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In the 1890s, the villagers of Tomochic, Chihuahua, became followers of a young woman curer and folk saint, La Santa de Caborca, and declared they would answer only to God. The Santa was exiled to the United States, and the Porfirian army moved against the villagers to return them to Porfirian conceptions of appropriate behavior. The final suppression of village required thousands of troops and hundreds of deaths to reestablish Porfirian domination.
Find this resource:
Gender Identities and Relationships

This category in the historical literature of the Porfirian era includes some of the most innovative and significant works of the past two decades, as noted in Sanders 2011. The authors have moved well beyond the early necessary but compensatory examinations of women in Mexico to studies of men, women, and family as integral parts of the historical narrative. Blum 2010 is an outstanding example of family history within the political and economic context of the time. Sloan 2009 and French 2002 explore fascinating aspects of courtship and marriage during the Porfiriato, and Buffington and Piccato 1999 examines questions of violence and gender. Irwin, et al. 2003 provides a full discussion of the sensational event called the Famous 41. Tuñon Pablos 1999 provides the best available survey of women in the national narrative.

Blum, Ann S. Domestic Economies: Family, Work, and Welfare in Mexico City 1884–1943. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This extraordinary study demonstrates that an examination of social and cultural topics can reveal a different periodization as the narrative covers the late Porfiriato and the course of the revolution. This well-written analysis provides a thorough examination of child abandonment and child labor as the author describes childhood, family, and motherhood of these years. This is the essential volume for the Porfirian years and the entire period she examines.
Find this resource:
Buffington, Robert M., with Pablo Piccato. “Tales of Two Women: The Narrative Construal of Porfirian Reality.” The Americas 55.3 (January 1999): 391–424.
DOI: 10.2307/1007648Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This prize-winning essay sets the standard for studies of women during the Porfiriato, with its deconstruction of the narratives about them that reveal how they understand the context of the daily life in which they lived.
Find this resource:
French, William E. “‘Te Amo Muncho’: The Love Letters of Pedro and Enriqueta.” In The Human Tradition in Mexico. Edited by Jeffrey Pilcher, 123–136. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
French examines the exchange of love letters between individuals, some of whom were literate, others semiliterate, and others completely unable to read and write at all. The tropes, references, and sentiments in the letters allow the author to examine a variety of literacies and their relationships to romance, courtship, and relationships.
Find this resource:
Irwin, Robert McKee, Ed McCaughan, and Michelle Nasser, eds. The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of authors, including Robert M. Buffington, reevaluate the events of the sensational arrest and punishment of the forty-one men who participated in a homosexual dance that ended with the arrival of the police. From the satirical broadsheets of José Guadelupe Posada to the enraged newspaper accounts of the time, this episode has remained a primary example of Porfirian gender and sexual attitudes.
Find this resource:
Sanders, Nicole. “Gender and Honor in Mexican History: Liberalism and Revolution in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Mexico.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 27.1 (Winter 2011): 207–221.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A valuable review that carefully evaluates the recent historical study of this topic and places into context Blum 2010 and Sloan 2009.
Find this resource:
Sloan, Kathryn. Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This exceptional monograph explores the general issues of courtship, marriage, and gender relationships in Oaxaca. A particular strength of the study is the discussion of the ways young women found to determine their own lives, loves, and relationships. It is placed in historiographical context in Sanders 2011.
Find this resource:
Tuñón Pablos, Julia. “Peace in Porfirian Times: In the Maelstrom of ‘Progress.’” In Women in Mexico: A Past Unveiled. By Julia Tuñón Pablos, 73–84. Translated by Alan Hynds. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Well-known scholar Julia Tuñón Pablos gives readers a sweeping introduction to women across Mexican history, with an excellent introduction to these activities during the Porfirian years. Her focus, drawing on much of the literature noted here, examines the impact of modern ideas and practices on the lives of women, especially among the elites.
Find this resource:
Land and Labor

Porfirian policies, based on liberal ideology and political attitudes, focused on the creation of land tenure that eliminated corporate landholders (under Benito Juárez and his successors, from 1857 to 1876, directed at the church and under Díaz, aimed at the indigenous communities). These policies, including surveys, seizures, and displacement of rural Mexicans, and especially Indians, resulted in land concentration that some works, especially Molina Enríquez 1909, warned threatened the regime, and later revolutionaries used them to justify the overthrow of the regime. Nevertheless, no thorough examination exists of the land tenure system, despite Hart 2002 (cited under Economy and Economic History), nor of the hacienda system (including debt peonage) despite Wasserman 1984 and Wasserman 1979 (both cited under Economy and Economic History) and a few others. Little work exists on the hacienda later, and in both what is listed here and in general studies, there seems to be an assumption that land concentration operated as it did in England: to push individuals off the land into the industrial workforce. It did not, however, as owners attempted to hold workers on the land. Other labor studies, such as Kuntz Ficker 2007 and Anderson 1976, have focused to a great extent on strikes that occurred just prior to the revolution. Land and labor during the Porfiriato remain significant but understudied topics.

Anderson, Rodney. Outcasts in their own Land: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906–1911. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Anderson provides well-researched discussions of workers, especially in the strikes in Cananea, Sonora, and Río Blanco, Veracruz. This volume should serve as an excellent model for additional investigations of Porfirian workers.
Find this resource:
Kuntz Ficker, Sandra. El comercio exterior de México en la era del capitalismo liberal, 1870–1929. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This important volume combines a number of articles that provide a solid foundation for additional studies of labor during the Porfiriato.
Find this resource:
Molina Enríquez, Andrés. Los grandes problemas nacionales. Mexico City: Imprenta de A. Carranza e hijos, 1909.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This classic discussion of the negative effects of land concentration on the economy and politics was written by one of the Porfirians, but it served for the first half of the 20th century as a guide to revolutionary agrarian reform policies.
Find this resource:
Popular Culture and Daily Life

The cultural histories written about the Porfirian era often draw on French methodology and historiography. This has resulted in a Mexican historiography with a stimulating series of investigations that have examined fiestas, funerals, and other aspects of daily life, examining performances and exhibitions as expressions of national identity and popular culture. Actors, puppets, musicians and participants in holiday ceremonies, through their performances, provide insightful narratives of national life. From this base, additional studies of cultural life have turned to written texts and visual sources, particularly love letters, broadsheet images, photographs, and paintings, as well as to performances.

Festivals, Performances, and Exhibitions

Popular festivals, associated with civil and religious holidays, provide occasions for ordinary people to celebrate, enjoy themselves, and, using satire, to mock political and economic elites and those who violate society’s rules, as discussed in Pérez Montfort 2003 and Pérez Montfort 2008. This was especially the case with Centennial celebrations, noted in Tenorio Trillo 2001. Judas burnings as part of the Easter holiday offered a major opportunity for satirical commentary on Porfirian society, as discussed in Beezley 2004. Other civil holidays, such as marking the first arrival of the railroad in a town, resulted in a showcase of attitudes about what modernization meant for the community, as discussed in Coronado 2009, while popular culture generally provided an outlet for fears about railroad and other new technologies, as discussed in Matthews 2007. State funerals allowed government officials to exhibit their ideas of the nation, heroes, and models for social behavior. The Porfirians relied heavily on these occasions, as noted in Esposito 2010. Government officials also used exhibitions, especially at world’s fairs, as an opportunity to represent their views of the nation and its people, as discussed in Tenorio Trillo 1996 and Yeager 1977. Performances, by both actors and puppets, offered entertainment and helped create a general knowledge of the nation and its people that resulted in a sense of national identity, as discussed in Beezley 2008.

Beezley, William H. Judas at the Jockey Club. 2d ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Pioneering cultural history of the Porfirian era that examines the material cultural of rural Mexico, the social practices of the urban elites, and the cultural clashes of popular and plutocratic Mexicans at Judas burnings. One of the first studies of the popular fiestas of burning of Judas effigies at the end of Holy Week.
Find this resource:
Beezley, William H. Mexican National Identity: Memory, Innuendo and Popular Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the 19th century in general, but with a good deal of attention to the Porfirian years, to analyze the rise of popular nationalism based the ephemeral sources of civic fiestas, board games, lotería de figuras, and puppet theater.
Find this resource:
Coronado Guel, Luis Edgardo. La Alameda Potosina ante la llegada del ferrocarril: Espacio, poder e institucionalización de la ciudadanía moderna en San Luis Potosí, 1878–1890. San Luis Potosí, Mexico: Secretaría de Cultura, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Prize-winning analysis of the discourses of modernization among the leaders of San Luis Potosí and the expression of these attitudes in the fiesta celebrating the arrival of the railroad in the town. Describes how the railroad remade the urban spaces and economic activities of the city.
Find this resource:
Esposito, Matthew D. Funerals, Festivals, and Cultural Politics in Porfirian Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Government-sponsored public funerals enabled the Porfirian regime to connect the president with the nation’s previous heroes. Often this method of establishing legitimacy relied on reburial in the newly created Rotunda of the Illustrious or the creation of new monuments.
Find this resource:
Matthews, Michael. “Railway Culture and the Civilizing Mission in Mexico, 1876–1910.” PhD diss., University of Arizona, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Study of the cultural impact of the railroads on Porfirian society and culture including daily life, business opportunities, crime, literature and music. Provides a unique evaluation of railroad accidents, injuries, and deaths, and the popular fears of technology.
Find this resource:
Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: Diez ensayos sobre cultura popular y nacionalismo. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Essential reading on popular culture. Essays dealing with the Porfiriato investigate popular music, fiestas, Jarocho music, celebrations discussed in the novel, and Bandidos del Río Frio; other chapters discuss folkloric stereotypes before and after this era.
Find this resource:
Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. Cotidianidades, imaginarios y contextos: Ensayos de historia y cultura en México, 1850–1950. Mexico City: CIESAS, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Essential reading on Porfirian culture. Essays in this volume analyze the relationship between ordinary people and Porfirian culture, as well as the circus, theater, and variety shows at the turn of the century and their relationship to culture.
Find this resource:
Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio. Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Outstanding evaluation of the Porfirian government’s exhibit at the Paris World’s Fair of 1889, with a careful analysis of the exhibit hall, and the variety of the displays as a representation of the image the Porfirian’s wanted to promote of their nation. Mexican displays at other World’s Fairs receive some attention, but the focus is on Paris.
Find this resource:
Tenorio Trillo, Mauricio. “1910 Mexico City: Space and Nation in the City of the Centenario.” In ¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva la Independencia! Celebrations of September 16. Edited by William H. Beezley and David E. Lorey, 167–198. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Significant study of the Centennial Celebration of Independence under the direction of Porfirio Díaz in the capital city. The study also discusses urban history of the city during this period.
Find this resource:
Yeager, Gene. “Porfirian Commercial Propaganda: Mexico in the World Industrial Expositions.” The Americas 34 (October 1977): 230–243.
DOI: 10.2307/981355Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Significant examination of official efforts to promote Mexican economic potential through commercial and industrial exhibitions. The article provides a unique study of Porfirian development and programs as expressed in the nation’s international exhibits.
Find this resource:
Written and Visual Texts in Daily Life

The advent of new printing and photographic technologies made possible the widespread distribution of images as photographs and broadsheets. José Guadalupe Posada became famous during the Porfiriato for his drawings, represented as lithographs, that illustrated sensational news stories, disasters, and crimes. He also produced images of folklore and popular culture, as discussed in Barajas Durán 2009 and Frank 1998. Lithographs and photographs gave a visual dimension to the portrayal of social classes and occupation groups to represent the nation, as noted in Velázquez Guadarrama 2004. Letters also became increasingly important to individuals. Whether or not they can be considered literature, Porfirians sent and received letters, especially as part of courtship, as discussed in French 2011b. The national culture received reinforcement from the growth of the school system that underscored political and social attitudes of the regime, as discussed in Vaughan 1982. These visual and written documents, both from the school and beyond, focused on daily life of the era, as discussed in French 2011a.

Barajas Durán, Rafael. La caricatura política de José Guadalupe Posada y Manuel Alfonso Manilla. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The finest discussion of Posada’s career and his political cartoons available as of 2011. Burajas Durán, a cartoonist himself (known as el Fisgón), provides an outstanding history of Posada’s work, separates Posada’s satirical images from those of Manuel Alfonso Manilla, and provides information (style, size, publication, date, description, and interpretation) for 316 Posada images. There is no better reference.
Find this resource:
Frank, Patrick. Posada’s Broadsheets: Mexico’s Popular Imagery, 1890–1910. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Close analysis of Posada’s broadsheets that combines discussion of the images with the texts, such as sensational news stories and corridos.
Find this resource:
French, William E. “Living the Vida Local: Contours of Everyday Life.” In A Companion to Mexican History and Culture. Edited by William H. Beezley, 13–33. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011a.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444340600Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this historiographical essay, the author discusses everyday life from independence to the early 21st century. He provides the best assessment of the topic available for the Porfiriato.
Find this resource:
French, William E. “‘Cartas y cartas, compadre. . . .’: Love and other letters from Río Frío.” In Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction. 2d ed. Edited by William H. Beezley and Linda Curcio-Nagy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011b.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The author uses the classic novel Los Bandidos del Río Frío (1889–1891) to explore the cultural knowledge and different literacies of the Porfiriato, as demonstrated in the letters incorporated in the text. The essay neatly relates reading and writing to oral literacy.
Find this resource:
Vaughan, Mary Kay. State, Education, and Social Class. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The only scholarly evaluation in English of the education program established during the years of Porfiriato. Other scholars examine parts of the education program, but Vaughan looks at the national program and its connection to state and social class formation.
Find this resource:
Velázquez Guadarrama, Angélica. “Clase y género en la pintura costumbrista, 1865–1899.” In Hacia otra historia del arte en México: La amplitud del modernismo y la modernidad (1861–1920). Edited by Stacie G. Widdifield, 137–158. Mexico City: CONACULTA, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This essay fits in both the social class and gender categories and is an excellent example of the ways that images can be used to discover and document questions involving these two themes, especially when few other records exist for ordinary people who avoid such record-keeping institutions as the police, army, and municipal licensing bureaus.
Find this resource: