Juarez and La Reforma Separate Church and State

What happened

Benito Juarez, born in a Zapotec-speaking village in Oaxaca and orphaned before age four, rose through law and Oaxaca's governorship to become a leading liberal reformer. As Minister of Justice, he authored the Ley Juarez of 1855, ending separate military and Church courts, and as Minister of Government helped push through the Ley Lerdo of 1856, forcing the Church to sell land not used directly for worship. These reforms culminated in the Constitution of 1857, sworn in on 5 February 1857, which enshrined freedom of religion, speech, and the press alongside the church-state separation. The Church's demand that anyone swearing loyalty to the new constitution be excommunicated, met by the government's insistence that all officials take that oath, triggered the Reform War (Guerra de Reforma) of 1858 to 1861 between liberals under Juarez and conservatives defending clerical privilege. During the war Juarez, as president of the Supreme Court and thus next in line for the presidency after a conservative coup deposed his predecessor, issued further decrees in 1859 confiscating uncompensated Church property, establishing civil marriage, and formally separating church and state; the liberals won the war by the end of 1860.

How we know

The Constitution of 1857 survives in full in the Library of Congress Law Library's rare book collection, and Juarez's biography and the sequence of reform decrees are documented in the Library of Congress's dedicated exhibition on this period of Mexican history.

Sources

• The Mexican Revolution and the United States exhibit, Library of Congress. Benito Juarez (1806-1872) · Primary sourceloc.gov · The domain "loc.gov" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• The Mexican Revolution and the United States exhibit, Library of Congress. Federal Constitution of the United States of Mexico, Sanctioned and Sworn in by the General Constitutional Congress (February 5, 1857) · Primary sourceloc.gov · The domain "loc.gov" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)