Benito Juarez

Between 1848 and 1852, when Benito Juarez assumed the state governorship, political calm briefly returned to Oaxaca. His administration concentrated on transportation, building bridges throughout the state and improving the road north to Tehuacan, which continued on to Mexico City. With some Italian investment in the northern mountains, mining reappeared, and coffee was introduced in many of the areas where cochineal had formerly been cultivated. English investors also established a textile and a hat factory in a village close to Oaxaca City, Vista Hermosa, and another village, Atzompa, reemerged as a pottery center.

But following Juarez's governorship, the national political struggles between liberals and conservatives and the War of Reform again engulfed Oaxaca, continuing virtually without respite from 1853 until 1876. Rape, plunder, assassination, murder of prisoners, and unchecked destruction of property characterized the actions of both sides in the conflict. Economic activity became impossible, and soon hunger became a more pervasive danger than the warring troops.

The political turmoil of the early nineteenth century did not swell the city as the disease-induced demographic catastrophe had done in the early seventeenth century. Population grew only gradually throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century at a rate of slightly under 1 percent a year. The most significant jump occurred when Benito Juarez served as the state's governor. Political calm caused the city to grow. In spite of two large earthquakes, one in 1845 and another in 1854, the city grew by one-third in the twelve years from 1843 to 1855, an annual growth rate of 2.5 percent per year. The city also apparently fared better during the War of Reform than it had during the War for Independence. It managed to maintain the same population and even grew slightly.

Those who had been on the fringes of the elite - criollo and mestizo merchants, professionals and some landowners - found themselves at the top of the local social hierarchy without having increased their wealth at all. Of these, probably the most important were the professionals; most had origins in the elite, but a significant minority were upwardly mobile individuals of whom Benito Juarez, who came from a rural indigenous village, is an archetype. The lower levels of the social hierarchy were largely unaffected by the war. They were not impressed into military service, but they were taxed to support whatever side currently controlled the city.

Although political activity and government repression took place throughout the state, the main focus was the university. The difficulties began with university elections for the rector, equivalent to a university president in the United States. Beginning in December of 1975, Universidad Autinoma Benito Juarez de Oaxaca ( UABJO) students struck for two months to protest the appointment of unpopular directors in some of the university's schools. The selection process produced two rectors, one chosen by majority vote and the other imposed by the state government. The two factions forcibly occupied different buildings within the university and snipings and killings occurred. In response to the confusion and not wishing to take sides, the federal government withheld its subsidy to the university.

Not every colonia popular, however, is so united or so successful. A counterexample is provided by Colonia Benito Juarez, which lies above the Pan American Highway as it enters Oaxaca from Mexico City and climbs the Cerro del Fortan to overlook and skirt the city's center. Colonia Benito Juarez began as an extension of the colonia immediately below it and on the other side of the highway, Colonia Santa Maria. Santa Maraa was legally developed in 1960 and 1961. At the same time there were two attempted invasions of the land above the highway. Both times, lawyers who claimed legal ownership of the land persuaded authorities to expel the invaders.