Liberal general Porfirio Díaz seized president power in 1876 after having distinguished himself as a leader in the war against the French Intervention. As president, he fully supported the embellishment of the Paseo de la Reforma with statuary representing Mexico's heroes through its history, creating "monuments worth of the culture of this city, and whose sights remind of the heroism with which the nation fought against the Conquest in the sixteenth century and for the Independence and Reform in the present." Initially, liberal General Vicente Riva Palacio, grandson of liberal leader of independence Vicente Guerrero, was involved in projects to raise the capital's profile when he served as Díaz's Minister of Development ("fomento") (1876-1879). As part of the centralizing impetus of Díaz's government, the Paseo de la Reforma was to include statues of heroes and cultural eminences of Mexico's constituent states, although some state leaders objected to the reassertion of traditional Mexico City's power.