During the civil war known as La Reforma, 1857-1860, he worked closely with the liberal party serving in the army and later as private secretary to Melchor Ocampo, ministro universal in Juárez’ cabinet. Although he received his lawyer’s title in 1857, Romero was not permitted to practice law because he was under the minimum age of twenty-one. With Juárez’ influence Romero obtained a modest part-time position in the ministry of foreign relations where he made a thorough study of the archives of that department, publishing in 1859 a guide to Mexico’s treaties with foreign nations. In 1855 at the age of eighteen he went to Mexico City to continue studies in law, aided by a former director of the Oaxaca Institute, Benito Juárez, who was then serving as minister of justice in the national cabinet. Born in 1837 he was a precocious child and prodigious student, winning prizes and other distinctions at Oaxaca’s Institute of Arts and Sciences. Romero’s political career was enhanced if not determined entirely by the fact of being born in Oaxaca, the birthplace of Benito Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, Ignacio Mariscal, and other national leaders of his time. Such obscurity is undeserved for a man who was once postmaster-general of Mexico, three times minister of the treasury, senator and deputy in the Mexican legislature, a promoter and official of Mexican railroads, editor of thousands of pages of documents, author of several books and more than twenty published articles in English and Spanish, an organizer of the Pan American Union, and envoy to the United States intermittently over a period of forty years. In addition to the usual diplomatic duties, Romero was involved with attempts to secure a fifty million dollar loan in the United States, the purchase of several million dollars worth of munitions, propaganda activities on behalf of the Mexican republic, and diplomatic maneuvering to thwart the agents of Napoleon III and his puppet Maximilian.īefore considering the activities of Matías Romero a few biographical notes may be of interest, especially since there is no article about him in English nor any biography in Spanish or English.
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Romero’s task of maintaining cordial relations between the two countries proved especially difficult because of the wars being waged on both sides of the Rio Grande-the Civil War on one side and the French Intervention on the other. During those critical years a brilliant young Mexican, Matías Romero, served in Washington as the official representative of the Juárez government. Certainly President Juárez had a great advantage in being recognized as the legitimate head of Mexico by the United States government.
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Historians have usually given some credit for the success of the Juaristas to the United States, whose military and diplomatic leaders opposed the empire and favored the republic. I n the 1860’s when French troops invaded Mexico and imposed Maximilian von Hapsburg as emperor, President Benito Juárez actively resisted the European aggression until eventually his republicans triumphed over the imperialists.