Editing Porfirio Díaz (section)

===Education===
The young Díaz was sent to primary school at the age of 6<ref name="Garner_26">{{Harvp|Garner|2001|p=26}}</ref> and at one point was apprenticed to a carpenter.{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|pp=3–4}} In 1845, at the age of fifteen, Díaz entered the ''Colegio Seminario Conciliar de Oaxaca'', to study for the priesthood, sponsored by his godfather, José Agustín Domínguez, canon of and eventually Bishop of Oaxaca.{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|p=4}}

In 1846, the [[Mexican-American War]] broke out, and Díaz joined a Oaxacan military battalion. He practiced drills and attended lectures on tactics and strategy at the [[Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca|Institute of Arts and Sciences]], but he never saw combat by the time the war ended in 1848.{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|p=4}}

By 1849, Díaz decided that he did not have a vocation to the priesthood<ref name="Garner_26"/> and over the objections of his family decided to switch his studies to law.<ref name="brit"/><ref name="Garner_27"/>{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|p=5}} He gained the friendship of Don Marcos Pérez and Indigenous judge and professor of law at the [[Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca|Institute of Arts and Sciences]] through which Díaz also came to know his future colleague and president of Mexico, [[Benito Juárez]] who was at that time Governor of Oaxaca.<ref name="Garner_27">{{Harvp|Garner|2001|p=27}}</ref>{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|p=30}} Díaz passed his first examination in civil and canon law in 1853, at the age of 23.{{Sfn|Hannay|1917|p=5}}