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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) presented at his morning conference an image of the second emperor of Mexico, Maximilian of Habsburg, in which the European ruler can be seen standing while surrounded by a group of conservatives, who will ask for his help in leading the country's new monarchy.
It should be noted that this event meant the fracture of the government of one of the most important figures for AMLO (Benito Juárez), but what is the story behind that event shown by the president?
First, it is important to emphasize that the chief executive exhibited the image in order to call not to accept “the role of vassals” in the country, for this reason he showed the illustration he entitled “Conservatives are going to offer Maximilian the empire of Mexico”.
López Obrador said that it is relevant to analyze this episode in history, since it was the opposition at the time who asked the French Empire for help, a situation that he compared with the situation of foreign refusal due to its electricity reform, specifically because of the position of the four Democratic US senators.
He stressed that the country should not return to the time when political decisions depended on the interventions of other nations, since “it is no longer that time, we no longer accept it, it is the principle of non-intervention, of peaceful settlement, we have to stick to what the Constitution says, article 89, there is the policy of principles”.
He mentioned that precisely because of the event hidden in that portrait of Maximilian. According to an article by the Institute for Historical Research of UNAM, the period of the conflicts between liberals and conservatives occurred because of the “ideological and political differences of leading the country, as well as the foreign interests that were at stake, on the one hand the liberals met the Benemeritus and The United States at the helm, and on the other hand, Maximilian (representing the French Empire) sheltering the Conservatives.”
As AMLO illustrated, the arrival of the Second Mexican Empire meant France's domination over the territory, mainly because the conservative group was not willing to give up its power, which led them to “seek out the archduke to ask him to be the European prince who managed to correct the divisions and countless problems that plagued Mexico and its society”.
The journey of this opposition group's journey to Juárez began thanks to the fact that Napoleon III, the emperor of France, sought to extend his domain to the American continent, the call for help was the perfect pretext to conquer a new demarcation.
The Ministry of Culture explains that a group “made up of members of the Conservative Party approached the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg to offer him the imperial crown of Mexico. Maximilian accepted it on October 3, 1863, in his Miramar Palace, convinced that his government, in addition to having the military support of France, would be well received in Mexico.”
Thus, on April 10, 1864, the Treaties of Miramar were signed so that the European and his wife, Empress Carlota, would carry out all the preparations for the royal adventure. The same source points out that “the first official images were taken by the photographer of the court in Trieste, Giuseppe Malovich. However, an official oil image was also required, that is, two large canvases in which the emperors were presented with all the solemnity expected of a court”.
These portraits were commissioned to Franz Xaver Winterhalter, who was one of the most prestigious portraitists among the European aristocracy. Finally, it is important to emphasize that the Habsburg policies were even more liberal than those of Benito Juárez himself, a situation that was crucial to the collapse of his mandate, because the European authorities withdrew their support for not abiding by conservative ideology.
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