Juarez was born in San Pablo Guelatao, a small village on the Ixtlan Mountain Ridge that was renamed Juarez Mountain Ridge after him. Of Zapotec origin Bento Juarez has been the only indigenous person to be President of Mexico.
An orphan since he was 3 years old Juarez began working as a shepherd at an early age. In Guelatao there was no school and nobody spoke Spanish. At 12 Juarez ran away to Oaxaca City to pursue his desire to get educated. Eventually Juarez became a lawyer.
Before being President, Juarez was Oaxaca's representative and later its governor. In 1858 Juarez became Mexico's President.
Considered the father of the Mexican Republic Juarez reforms helped the State to emancipate from the Church, creating civil laws that ensured a secular education, civil weddings and burials and hospitals run by the government.
He fought the French Invasion and the establishment of a Monarchic government supported by the conservative. Benito Juarez Garcia was proclaimed the Worthy of the Americas by the government of Colombia in 1867.