Title: Mexico - La Reforma | Britannica
Headings: 
La Reforma
French intervention
The restored republic

Content: The role of the returned expatriates was to act as a brain trust to carry out La Reforma (“The Reform”). Its aims were to abolish remnants of colonialism by removing special ecclesiastical and military privileges; to separate church and state by secularizing education, marriages, and burials; to reduce the economic power of the church by forcing it to sell its properties; to foster an economic development that envisaged Mexico as a country of yeoman farmers and small industrialists; and, above all, to establish a single standard of legal justice. Juárez was made minister of justice. Among his first reforms was the so-called Ley Juárez (Nov. 23, 1855), which abolished fueros (special exemptions) and the use of special military and ecclesiastical courts in civil cases. The minister of finance, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, sponsored the Ley Lerdo (June 25, 1856), which restricted the right of ecclesiastical and civil corporations to own lands by decreeing that church lands not directly used for religious purposes and lands held in common by indigenous communities ( ejidos) must be sold. Benito Juárez
Benito Juárez.