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Porfirio Díaz was Mexico’s authoritarian president for most of the period from 1876 to 1911. While he brought political stability to the nation after a tumultuous half-century, he also undermined property rights by seizing land and granting his allies monopolies over key industries. Therefore, Acemoglu and Robinson conclude that Díaz built highly extractive political and economic institutions, greatly contributing to Mexico’s high contemporary levels of poverty and inequality.
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Porfirio Díaz Character Timeline in Why Nations Fail
The timeline below shows where the character Porfirio Díaz appears in Why Nations Fail. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: So Close and Yet So Different
...wealthy people and charged exorbitant interest rates. The problem was political: after the authoritarian president Porfirio Díaz took power in 1876, he freely ignored property rights and gave his friends monopolies over...
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...to seize and settle indigenous land on the frontier, while in Latin America, leaders like Porfirio Díaz gifted frontier land to their powerful friends. While political reforms benefited many people in the...
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Chapter 3: The Making of Prosperity and Poverty
...when newcomers disrupt the existing elite, they have incentives to recreate an extractive system (like Porfirio Díaz in Mexico).
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