Mexico's economy and its education system are…

Mexico's economy and its education system are vitally important to Juárez 's new administration.

Economic development is based on the improvement of communications, the exploitation of the country's natural resources, and the revamping of the mining sector through favorable tax guidelines.

Seeking to reduce banditry and to attract investment capital, Juárez strengthens the rurales, the Rural Defense Force (Guardia Rural) responsible for the security of roads and land cargo, and places it under the Ministry of Interior.

The improvement of communications begins with the completion in 1873 of the railroad that links Mexico City with Veracruz, a Mexican venture that had been started in the 1850s.

In the area of education, a complete reorganization is directed by a commission headed by the prominent physician and positivist intellectual, Gabino Barreda.

He devises a school curriculum that concentrates on mathematics and the physical sciences.

For the first time, education becomes mandatory.

Despite new schools, the liberal aspiration for literacy and schools open to all remains an unfulfilled goal, as in most nineteenth-century rural societies.