LERDO DE TEJADA, SEBASTIN

born April 25, 1827, Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico died April 1889, New York, N.Y., U.S. president of Mexico from 1872 to 1876. Lerdo, orphaned and impoverished as a child, struggled to obtain an education and became professor of jurisprudence and rector of the College of San Ildefonso in Mexico City. A political liberal, he joined Benito Jurez during the period of French intervention in Mexico (186167), becoming president of the Tribunal Supremo (Supreme Court) and de facto vice president of the Mexican republic after its restoration in 1867. After Jurez' death in 1872, Lerdo became president of Mexico, only to be immediately challenged by Porfirio Daz, another of Jurez' lieutenants. Opposed by provincial chieftains who resented Lerdo's centralized government, by the church for his connection with the anticlerical reforms of Jurez, and by progressives who criticized his failure to undertake public works, Lerdo was driven into exile by an uprising led by Daz in 1877.