- Mexico’s first president Guadalupe Victoria (1824-1829) was in fact christened Jose Miguel Ramon Adaucto Fernandez y Felix. He assumed a new name in tribute to the nation’s triumph in the struggled for independence and to the dark-skinned Virgin whose image was emblazoned on the standards on insurgent troops. He was also the first bachelor to serve as the country’s head of state. He finally married in 1841 at age 55, leaving bride Maria Antonia Breton a widow less than two years later after suffering an epileptic seizure.
- Miguel Miramon (1859-1860) was the country’s youngest president, taking office at age 27. He died in June 1867, three months before his 35th birthday.
- Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana goes down in history as the man who served the most times as Mexico’s chief executive. He occupied the presidential chair 11 different times between 1833 and 1855, accumulating a total of five years, eight months and 21 days in office over that period.- Porfirio Diaz ruled longer than any other Mexican president, keeping a firm grip on power from 1877 to 1911, even during the nominal 1880-1884 stint of cohort Manuel Gonzalez. The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution ended the 30-year Diaz dictatorship. Forced into exile, he lived in Paris, France until his death there in 1915.
- In contrast, Pedro Lascurain Paredes holds both the national and world record for the shortest presidency. He took office on February 19, 1913 at 5:15 p.m., turning his resignation over to Congress just 45 minutes later. His sole act was to name Victoriano Huerta as Secretary of the Interior, thereby putting him next in line to assume the office.
- Easily ranking as Mexico’s most cherished president, Benito Juarez is the only full-blooded Indian native to have ever held the post. Born to Zapotec parents and orphaned in infancy, he did not master Spanish until he reached his teens. Considered as a national hero and the country’s greatest liberal statesman, he guided the country through a turbulent period of history while holding the presidency five times on and off between 1858 and 1872.
- Elected after the fall of Diaz, Francisco I. Madero (1911-1913) turned out to be a bit of an oddball. He was a teetotaler, vegetarian and professed spiritualist who claimed to have conjured up the spirit of Benito Juarez for political guidance. On November 30, 1911 he boarded a Deperdussin piloted by Geo Dyott for a 12-minute flight over nation’s capital, earning the distinction as the first head of state in the world to fly in an airplane.
- President Vicente Fox – whose 2000 election broke 71 years of uninterrupted political control by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – entered politics after working his way up the Coca-Cola company’s corporate ladder at. Starting out behind the wheel of a delivery truck in 1964, he rose to become president of Coca-Cola Mexico and eventually take on the company’s top post for all of Latin America. Coke became Mexico’s top selling soft drink as sales soared by nearly 50 percent on his watch.