Valentín Gómez Farías

Valentín Gómez Farías was a Mexican physician and liberal politician who served repeatedly as interim president during the 1830s and 1840s. He is known for reforms that challenged the Catholic Church’s and military’s privileges.

Antonio López de Santa Anna: A Mexican military leader and politician who served as president eleven times between 1833 and 1855. Santa Anna repeatedly held the presidency while Gómez Farías governed in his absences, then reversed many of his reforms.
Mexican Liberal Reform of 1833: A reform program enacted under Gómez Farías that sought to reduce the Catholic Church’s and military’s institutional privileges. It was the central legislative project of his first interim presidency.
Mexican War of Independence: The armed struggle from 1810 to 1821 that ended Spanish rule and established Mexico as an independent country. Its aftermath produced the new state whose institutions Gómez Farías sought to reform.
Reform War: A Mexican civil war fought from 1857 to 1861 between liberals and conservatives over the country’s political and religious order. The conflict revisited institutional disputes that Gómez Farías’s reforms had brought into national politics.
José María Luis Mora: A Mexican priest, historian, and liberal thinker who advocated secular education and the reduction of corporate privileges. Mora’s liberal ideas helped shape the reform program Gómez Farías pursued in 1833.
Ley del Caso: A 1833 Mexican law that authorized the expulsion of named opponents of the government without ordinary judicial process. Its use against political opponents exposed the coercive edge of the reform government.
First Mexican Empire: The short-lived monarchy ruled by Agustín de Iturbide from 1822 to 1823. Its collapse preceded the republican political order in which Gómez Farías rose.
Lerdo Law: A 1856 Mexican law requiring civil and religious corporations to sell much of their landed property. It pursued the church-property changes that his earlier reform government had attempted.
Benito Juárez: A Mexican liberal politician who served as president during the Reform War and the French Intervention. Juárez later advanced liberal reforms that echoed and extended Gómez Farías’s earlier program.
University of Mexico: A colonial-era university in Mexico City, closed by Gómez Farías’s government in 1833 and later reopened. Its closure formed part of the effort to replace clerical control of higher education.

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Mexican liberalismRelated: His reform program showed how early liberals challenged corporate privileges.