Mexico’s Liberals Write the Constitution of 1857

On February 5, 1857, delegates of the Mexican Constituent Congress swore allegiance to an ambitious, polarizing governing charter. Meeting in Mexico City following the overthrow of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, liberal lawmakers had spent about a year debating the structure of the Mexican state. The assembly was split between moderate reformers, who favored updating the federalist Constitution of 1824, and radical liberals, known as puros, who demanded a clean break. The more radical faction successfully embedded far-reaching legal reforms, transforming the charter from a simple institutional reset into a major challenge to the established corporate order.

The new constitution affirmed individual liberties, ended imprisonment for civil debts, permanently prohibited mutilation, branding, whipping and torture, and sharply limited the death penalty. Crucially, it sought to remake Mexican society around secular, individualist principles. It stripped the Catholic Church and military officers of their traditional legal fueros, which had long protected them from the jurisdiction of civil courts. The document also incorporated the principles of the Lerdo Law, forbidding religious and civil corporate bodies from acquiring or owning real estate, a measure that dismantled vast ecclesiastical holdings and, as historians note, left the legal status of communal indigenous land uncertain.