While growing up in Mexico, turn-of-the-20th-century president Porfirio Diaz was always described as a villain who abused his position to cling to power for around three decades, leading to the Mexican Revolution and old man Diaz living the rest of his life in exile in France.
But now it seems that legacy has been reevaluated as much more nuanced and complex than that, with Diaz as more of a benevolent dictator with weaknesses and blind spots, who pushed his country to modernize and enter the Industrial Era, a likely reason why Mexico - flaws and all - didn’t fall too far behind during the 20th century, did not become a pseudo-colonial/corporate territory like so much of Central and Southern America and the Caribbean.
This is a way more serious answer than I was expecting. Most of my knowledge on the Porfiriato comes from the Revolutions podcast, and it does seem that it was better than either what was before or after (for a generation at least). if you have to have an autocrat, hope that they’re a modernist like Dias or Stolypin.
While growing up in Mexico, turn-of-the-20th-century president Porfirio Diaz was always described as a villain who abused his position to cling to power for around three decades, leading to the Mexican Revolution and old man Diaz living the rest of his life in exile in France.
But now it seems that legacy has been reevaluated as much more nuanced and complex than that, with Diaz as more of a benevolent dictator with weaknesses and blind spots, who pushed his country to modernize and enter the Industrial Era, a likely reason why Mexico - flaws and all - didn’t fall too far behind during the 20th century, did not become a pseudo-colonial/corporate territory like so much of Central and Southern America and the Caribbean.
This is a way more serious answer than I was expecting. Most of my knowledge on the Porfiriato comes from the Revolutions podcast, and it does seem that it was better than either what was before or after (for a generation at least). if you have to have an autocrat, hope that they’re a modernist like Dias or Stolypin.