Ramírez, Ignacio (1818–1879)

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Ramírez, Ignacio (1818–1879)

Ignacio Ramírez (b. 1818; d. 1879), Mexican journalist and cabinet minister. Ramírez was born in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and educated in Querétaro and Mexico City, where he received his degree in law. In 1845, with Guillermo Prieto and Vicente Segura, he began publishing the satirical journal Don Simplicio. Using the pseudonym "El Nigromante" (The Necromancer), Ramírez denounced the wealthy and the church with a wicked sense of humor. For example, El Nigromante proposed that "The Ten Commandments shall be retained in all their vigor, except the seventh, as long as citizens lack another honorable means to maintain their subsistence." Ramírez extended this social analysis more directly in other articles: "We the workers say to the hacendados: Why without the sweat of your brows do you eat bread, or toss it to your prostitutes and lackeys? If you say because God made you rich, show us the deeds."

Ramírez may have been the most radical journalist and politician of his day and Mexico's most prominent atheist. Elected to the Constitutional Congress of 1856–1857, he advocated religious toleration. He argued that juridical equality was not sufficient and would not improve the standard of living for the majority of Mexico's people. Ramírez was critical of the Ley Lerdo because it would make property available only to the middle class and the wealthy, who already owned some property and had the money to buy more.

President Benito Juárez selected Ramírez to serve as minister of justice (21 January 1861–9 May 1861) and minister of development (18 March 1861–3 April 1861). Ramírez believed that the Constitution of 1857 gave Congress supremacy over the presidency and came to regard Juárez as a dictator. He spent much of the second empire in exile in California. After the restoration of the republic, Ramírez returned to Mexico and served as a justice of the Supreme Court from 1868 to 1879. He supported Porfirio Díaz's Plan of Tuxtepec and served as Díaz's first minister of justice (29 November 1876–7 May 1877).

See alsoJournalism; Ley Lerdo; Mexico: 1810–1910.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Walter V. Scholes, Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872 (1957), pp. 8-9, 16, 60, 152.

Jesús Reyes Heroles, El liberalismo mexicano, 3 vols. (1957–1961), vol. 3, pp. 656-675.

Richard N. Sinkin, The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (1979), pp. 37, 41-42, 49, 126; Diccionario Porrúa de historia, biografía y geografía de México, 5th ed. (1986).