who ran mexico for decades as a dictator
Porfirio Díaz José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori (Spanish pronunciation: [porˈfiɾjo ði.as]; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915) was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of three and a half decades from 1876 to 1880 and from 1884 to 1911. A veteran of the War of the Reform (1858–60) and the French intervention in Mexico (1862–67), Díaz rose to the rank of General, leading republican troops against the French-imposed rule of Emperor Maximilian. Seizing power in a coup in 1876, Díaz and his allies, a group of technocrats known as "Científicos",[1] ruled Mexico for the next thirty-five years, a period known as the Porfiriato.