— Paul Shedlarski, Cabin John, Md.

On April 15, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson stood before assembled dignitaries in Mexico City and said: “All nations rightly praise their own famous men. But only a truly great people pause to pay tribute to the great of other lands. And that is what Mexico is doing today.”

The occasion was the dedication of a statue of Abraham Lincoln, a gift from the American people to the people of Mexico. The Lincoln statue was a replica of an original by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.

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Lincoln was a popular figure in Mexico, dating all the way to his first term in Congress, when, as a Whig from Illinois, he opposed the 1846 U.S. invasion of Mexico. As president, Lincoln was against European imperialism in Mexico.

What does a Lincoln statue in Mexico have to do with a statue of Benito Pablo Juárez García in Washington? Well, Juárez is sometimes called the Lincoln of Mexico. Though the two men never met, they have long been linked in the public imagination, especially south of the border.

They shared certain similarities. Both were born into rural poverty, Lincoln in a log cabin in Kentucky, Juárez in an adobe house in Oaxaca. Both became lawyers and politicians. Lincoln fought to quell internal forces that were tearing apart his country. Juárez opposed the machinations of outsiders, including French emperor Napoleon III, who with the support of conservatives in Mexico sent Maximilian I, the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, to Mexico in 1863 to establish a new monarchy.

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That didn’t work out so well. Soldiers loyal to Juárez defeated the French, and in 1867, Maximilian was executed.

After the Lincoln statue was unveiled in Mexico City, the Mexicans decided to reciprocate. In August 1968, the U.S. Senate approved placing the Juárez statue in Washington. It was decided that the Juárez statue, a copy cast from sculptor Enrique Alciati’s 1891 original, would be placed at New Hampshire and Virginia avenues NW.

A new circle had been created when Interstate 66 was driven underneath what had been a regular intersection. (The official name for the short stretch of road under the circle is the Potomac River Freeway. It marks the eastern end of I-66.) Because it was a new circle, it had no name. (In fact, there are no signs there now denoting it as Juárez Circle.)

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The 20-foot, 3,600-pound bronze statue was trucked from Mexico to Laredo, Tex., then loaded onto a rail car for its trip to Washington. The journey was rough on Juárez. As The Post’s Martin Weil wrote 50 years ago: “When the crate was opened Dec. 16, officials found to their dismay that the statue’s right arm, designed to thrust forcefully outward, was cracked, sagging and almost severed. Other cracks crossed the casting’s legs.”

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The Washington firm of Riley’s Welding Services was hired to secure the statesman’s arm and fill in the fissures.

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Mexican Foreign Minister Antonio Carrillo Flores spoke at the Jan. 7, 1969, dedication of the Juárez statue. Said Rusk: “We shared with Mexico one of our greatest heroes and now Mexico is sharing with us one of its greatest sons.”

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Secreted in the granite base the statue stands on is an urn that holds soil from the town in Oaxaca, where Juárez — an indigenous Indian — was born. And below the figure of Juárez, in Spanish and English, is a famous quote from the Mexican statesman: “Respect for the rights of others is peace.”

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