Prieto, Guillermo (1818–1897)

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Prieto, Guillermo (1818–1897)

Guillermo Prieto (b. 1818; d. 1897), Mexican cabinet minister, poet, dramatist, and author. Born in Mexico City, Prieto lived at Molino del Rey, near Chapultepec, where his father managed the mill and a bakery. When his father died in 1831 and his mother lost her sanity, Prieto worked in a clothing store until his poetry attracted the attention of Andrés Quintana Roo, who got him a post in the customs house and enrolled him in the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán.

Prieto's first poems were published when he was nineteen. The same year, President Anastasio Bustamante named Prieto his personal secretary and brought him to the presidential palace to live. Prieto's first theatrical work, El alférez, was produced in 1840, and others followed in 1842 and 1843. Prieto edited the Diario Oficial until Santa Anna overthrew Bustamante in 1841. He then wrote for El Siglo XIX and El Monitor Republicano, and in 1845 founded Don Simplicio with Ignacio Ramírez. He was elected to the national legislature in 1848, 1850, and 1852.

Prieto published his analysis of Mexico's fiscal circumstances, Indicaciones …, in 1850, and President Mariano Arista appointed him minister of finance in 1852. Although he recorded in his memoirs that he had sought attention and ostentation, Prieto also envisioned himself as a reformer. He favored lifting prohibitions on trade and reducing the costs of administration.

Arista's administration was soon overthrown, however, and Prieto was subjected to house arrest on orders from Antonio López de Santa Anna. A supporter of the Revolution of Ayutla, Prieto was appointed minister of finance by President Juan Álvarez. Prieto was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1856–1857 and served on the finance committee. Benito Juárez, who assumed the presidency in 1858, selected Prieto as his first finance minister. In March 1858, when conservative troops captured Juárez in Guadalajara during the War of the Reform, Prieto's eloquence saved the president from a firing squad. Prieto again headed the finance ministry in 1859 and 1861, but he broke with Juárez when the president refused to turn power over to Jesús González Ortega in 1865.

Prieto remained active in politics, however, favoring congressional authority over that of the executive. He supported the efforts of José María Iglesias against President Sebastián Lerdo De Tejada's abuse of executive authority in the 1876 elections and served as Iglesias's minister of government for several months before Iglesias was overthrown by Porfirio Díaz. Prieto remained a popular poet and continued publishing on such subjects as travel, history, and political economy. His Memorias de mis tiempos (1906) records his impressions of the years from 1828 to 1853.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walter V. Scholes, Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872 (1957), pp. 26-27, 60-65, 70.

Moisés González Navarro, Anatomía del poder en México, 1848–1853 (1977), pp. 173-175.

Richard N. Sinkin, The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (1979), pp. 49-50, 80, 85, 136-137.

Barbara A. Tenenbaum, The Politics of Penury: Debts and Taxes in Mexico, 1821–1856 (1986), pp. 115-116; Diccionario Porrúa de historia, biografía y geografía de México, 5th ed. (1986).