The Porfiriato was a period of Mexican history which covered the reign of the military strongman Porfirio Diaz from 28 November 1876 to 25 May 1911. Diaz, a hero of the French Intervention war, had launched a failed coup against Benito Juarez in 1871, but, amid a political crisis in November 1876, he entered Mexico City and deposed the feuding Liberal Party leaders Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada and Jose Maria Iglesias. Diaz had gained support while using the slogan "effective suffrage and no re-election", but he aimed at absolute power, winning the support of landowners, generals, local elites, foreign capitalists, sections of the middle class, and even powerful bandito leaders, while he killed or cowed the rest. Influenced by his belief that, "This rooster wants corn," he always tried to bribe rival politicians or generals, and he presided over a system of pan o palo - "bread or the club". Following the 1880 election, he murdered the rival candidates, the generals Trinidad Garcia de la Cadena and Juan Corona. However, bribery almost always worked for Diaz, who built up a political machine in which he could appoint the 27 state governors, 300 jefes politicos (local political bosses), 1,800 mayors or municipal presidents, and members of the powerless Congress and Supreme Court. Out of 227 representatives he nominated in 1886, 62 came from his home state of Oaxaca. He also passed the ley mordaza ("gagging law") to abolish the right to a jury trial for journalists found guilty of liberl or sedition, and newspapermen were able to be jailed without trial if they were accused of sedition or a lack of patriotism. Diaz also bribed journalists to serve as his mouthpieces, using sanctioned "opposition" newspapers to destroy the reputation of rising stars in the Army and politics. When bribery did not work, he sent in his bravi thugs to smash up presses and newspaper offices or provoke unwary editors into fatal duels. One of Diaz's enemies in the media, Filomeno Mata, went to jail no less than 34 times during the Porfiriato. In 1880, Diaz technically stepped aside in favor of his puppet Manuel Gonzalez Flores, but Gonzalez's incompetent administration led to Diaz being welcomed back in 1884 as a savior. By 1888, Diaz no longer felt the need to alternate power with puppets, and the constitution was amended in 1887 to allow a second successive term and in 1890 to remove term limits. At the same time, Diaz terrorized the countryside with the gray-clad and Mauser-equipped Rurales, who were allowed to shoot any fugitive who "tried to escape". 10,000 people were killed under this ley fuga (fugitive law). There were few revolts against Diaz, as he executed innocents as well as rebels after crushing a liberal rebellion in Veracruz in 1879. During the 1880s, Diaz crushed the Yaqui Native Americans after several years of tough fighting, starving them into surrender in 1887 and having their chief Cajeme executed by firing squad. He continued to fight the Yaqui into the 1890s, killing the entire male population of Navojoa in 1892, drowning 200 Yaqui prisoners in the Pacific Ocean of Guaymas that same year, slaughtering rebellious Yaquis at Mazacoba in 1898, and sending a boatload of Yaquis into slavery in Yucatan in 1908 (the would-be slaves committed mass suicide rather than enter bondage). Diaz exiled the Yaquis to Yucatan, and the Yaquis died in droves on the plantations of Yucatan. In 1900, Diaz sent in the Mexican Army under Victoriano Huerta to lay waste to the Yucatan in response to a Yaqui and Mayan uprising, committing genocide in the process. Diaz oversaw an entente with the Catholic Church and became an ally of foreign business interests, but his rule was ultimately ended by Francisco I. Madero's uprising of 1910-1911 at the start of the Mexican Revolution. Diaz's downfall and exile returned Mexico to violent anarchy, and the Revolution lasted into the early 1920s.