Genesis of the Rurales: Mexico’s Early Struggle for Public Security

For half a century following independence, endemic banditry afflicted rural Mexico. Tortuous roads, often mere trails etched over mountain barriers, barely linked the population centers, usually no more than villages, and there were few rivers to improve communications. Geography, therefore, favored those who would live by extortion and plunder. So did political instability, at times approaching chaos, for governments which were struggling for self-survival had neither the energy nor the revenue to devote to public security.

Following independence, Mexico’s federal administrations placed the responsibility for public security upon state and local governments. With the inauguration of the Reform in the 1850s, however, Mexico began to experiment with federal intervention in public security affairs, but in a hesitant and limited way. In 1855 the Minister of Gobernación, José María Lafragua, urged state governors to create whatever police forces they found necessary to secure lives and property in their respective states.¹ He soon realized, however, that the states by themselves could not, or would not, provide the police needed to control the widespread banditry; accordingly, a presidential decree of January 16, 1857, established a nationwide Guardia de Seguridad, a federal-state cooperative effort.² Four years later the famous rural police (Rurales) were founded on the model of rural detachments in the Guardia.³ The Rurales were to increase in both size and impact during the administrations of Benito Juarez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and they received particular notoriety during the Porfiriato.

A friend who had seen and admired Spain’s Guardia Civil first interested Lafragua in the possibility of a similar rural police force for Mexico. On his recommendation the minister obtained a copy of the laws that regulated the Spanish force and adapted them to Mexico’s needs.⁴ There were differences. For instance, Spain’s Civil Guard was solely a federal force, whereas the states were to share major responsibilities in the Mexican organization. Also the Spaniards were assigned outside of their home districts, so as to minimize the possibility of collusion with municipal officials; but Mexican guards were deliberately sent to their native regions in the hope that familiarity with the surroundings would improve their performance. As with the Spanish guard, Lafragua’s Rurales remained at the disposition of both the Ministry of War and that of Gobernación, and the official function of each force was the eradication of banditry.⁵

The duties of Lafragua’s guard extended from policing petty gambling activities at country fairs to fighting as regular army units against insurrection or foreign invasion. Yet the government set firm bounds on the authority of the guards who provided security for towns and countryside.⁶ Enlistment might be either voluntary or by federal appointment from among army personnel. Volunteers ranged between twenty-one and fifty years of age, and they were supposed to be army veterans with an unblemished service and civilian record, literate, and familiar with the area in which they served. Their pay was equated with military pay of the same rank. Although the law did not stipulate the length of enlistment for officers, noncommissioned personnel were to serve for two years. Uniforms were to be blue and unadorned. Arms, equipment, maintenance of horses, and training were provided in accordance with existing army regulations.⁷

While the federal government retained overall control of the Security Guard through an inspector general’s department in the Ministry of Gobernación, the states handled most of the daily supervision and administration. The national government paid the mobile detachments assigned to patrol national roadways; all others remained the financial responsibility of state and municipal authorities. In the sense that they were federally paid, Lafragua’s guards who protected the roads can be considered direct predecessors of the Rurales. Besides combatting brigandage, these rural squadrons also garrisoned military strongpoints along the roads and escorted money and munitions shipments and dignitaries.

The War Ministry supervised the organization, training, and logistics of the entire Security Guard, but municipal officials, ranking judges, and jefes políticos, as well as military commanders, had authority to specify assignments for the units. When a local authority asked for assistance, regulations required the security forces to comply.⁸

The mounting reaction of Conservatives to liberal reforms detracted from the government’s efforts to carry out its new public security program. Nevertheless, an office of the inspector general opened on February 16, 1857,⁹ and by summer five squadrons of rural police had been established to patrol major roads radiating from the capital. The government had hoped to employ regular army personnel in the new police work, but the soldiers were needed to combat the reactionaries.¹⁰ Therefore the new Rurales developed without much uniformity in organization and quality. The first squadron had ninety-nine guards stationed on the Puebla-Mexico City roadway, but the second, assigned to guard the road to Querétaro, had only twenty-eight men, and they were without arms and equipment.¹¹ Finally in November 1857 a lack of federal funds forced the administration to phase out its initial attempt to establish a rural police force.¹²

At about this time Comonfort broke with the Liberal movement and called for revision of the constitution that had been promulgated the previous February. He was supported by General Félix Zuloaga, who rebelled against the constitutional government at Tacubaya in December and advocated a temporary Comonfort dictatorship pending constitutional changes. The revolt caused a portion of Congress to flee, first from Mexico City and later from Querétaro, and to declare Benito Juárez president of the Republic. As Comonfort wavered in his loyalties, both sides rejected him and forced him into exile. General Zuloaga declared himself president, and three years of civil war followed.

Mindful of the need for continuing public security even while he fought the Jauristas, Zuloaga ordered the states to formulate their own police programs. As an example of what could be done, he authorized the establishment of one federally supported rural police corps to patrol the Mexico-Veracruz highway. It had 125 guards, plus officers, and the men provided their own horses and equipment. As an innovation calculated to produce efficiency, a schedule of fines was arranged for guards and officers who permitted a robbery to occur in their zone of responsibility. Commanders had to pay twenty-five pesos, lieutenants fifteen, and guards ten. Otherwise, the organization and duties of Rurales remained much the same as under Comonfort, but again the civil strife prevented the establishment of an effective public security system.¹³

Even when the war went against Juárez, and the Liberal regime was bottled up in Veracruz, he continued to stress the need to rid the nation of banditry, in order that Mexico might attract foreign capital and labor and realize its economic potential.¹⁴ As the Conservatives’ financial resources dwindled, the struggle began to turn against their forces, now commanded by General Miguel Miramón. Successive defeats in August and December 1860, opened Mexico City on January 1, 1861, to the Liberal General Jesús González Ortega, and ten days later Juárez followed him into the capital.

Victory did not mean peace, for although Juárez nominally governed the almost bankrupt country, Conservative military leaders and gangs of bandits posing as Conservatives terrorized much of the nation even to the outskirts of Mexico City. Many of those who had fought in the civil war were not patriots or idealists but simply bandits, accustomed to lives of crime, who had taken advantage of the conflict to continue their marauding in the shadow of a flag. The end of the war changed nothing,¹⁵ for bandits virtually ruled the southern part of the state of Mexico, much of Jalisco, the sierra of Xichú in Guanajuato, and many other mountainous regions. Juárez declared that there could be no amnesty for, nor negotiations with, these terrorists, “who are so covered with crimes that it is impossible to enter into a convention or transaction with them without degrading the Republic and mortally wounding the principles of justice and morality.”¹⁶ Federal and state governments, he concluded, should combine efforts to check banditry.

While encouraging the states to reassemble their own security units, the War Ministry assigned army troops to road patrol duty. General Antonio Carbajal’s brigade was dissolved in early 1861, but he was ordered to retain 150 of his best men to guard the Mexico City-Puebla highway.¹⁷ General Ignacio Zaragoza left his regular military command in March to join the state of Puebla’s security forces, an important event for the future Rurales, for the following month he became Minister of War. Undoubtedly the impressions and experiences which he acquired fighting bandits in Puebla induced him to organize Mexico’s first truly federal rural police force soon after he took office.¹⁸

Federal army expeditions sent to root out the insurgents could not cope with the guerrilla tactics of the enemy, for the cavalry had been seriously depleted by the civil war, and there was no money to replace the mounts, whereas the guerrillas could replenish their horses by raiding ranches and villages. In frustration the army was forced to limit itself to garrisons in the most important population centers.¹⁹

A more effective protection against the bandits was contributed by several private units, headed by former military commanders with whom the government contracted for public security work. For example, Colonel Rafael Cuellar’s Resguardo de México and Colonel Aureliano Rivera’s Cuerpo Defensores de la Libertad patrolled the environs of the Federal District. Cuellar dispatched his 230 men in detachments along the Puebla route,²⁰ while Rivera concentrated on the roadway to Toluca.²¹ Another contingent under Colonel Manuel Quesada functioned around Cuernavaca.²² Although these units captured some highwaymen and killed others, they made no noticeable progress in solving the general problem of Mexican banditry.

Faced by public criticism and the lackadaisical attitude of governors toward their police responsibilities, the federal government finally created the mounted police force commonly called the Rurales.²³ In taking this step Juárez was responding to another circumstance. He was anxious to reduce the size of the army, both to cut military expenditures and to minimize the strength of a potentially rebellious force. If the discharged soldiers were not to become restless, they needed steady work, and the Rurales could provide such employment.²⁴ Therefore, on May 6, 1861, the president issued a decree “establishing four corps of rural police for the security of the roadways.”²⁵

At first the administration could not decide whether to make the Rurales responsible to the Ministry of Gobernación or to the War Ministry. Gobernación normally managed federal police operations, but that ministry was ill equipped to organize, train, and direct a quasi-military force. This problem led to a division of responsibilities; Gobernación received 433, 260 pesos with which to administer the police, but the responsibility for field operations went to the War Ministry.²⁶ This compromise produced overlapping and confusion until 1869, when Congress formally placed the Rurales under the Minister of Gobernación.

The decree of 1861 designated detachments for central Mexico, covering major roads from the capital to Cuernavaca, Morelos, and Toluca and to Veracruz (by way of Puebla, with offshoots to Jalapa and Orizaba). Furthermore, the decree established four command posts: either Cuernavaca or Morelos, Mexico City, either San Agustín del Palmar or Nopalucán in the state of Puebla, and Tepeji del Río in Hidalgo. Each of the four corps was to contain 225 guards, with a commander, three corporals first class, and fifteen second class. The corps contained three companies, and each company five squadrons of fifteen men. However, the decree allowed the Minister of War to increase or decrease the size of the units, vary their duty stations, and even place them at the disposal of local authorities.²⁷

The provision set pay for commanders at 210 pesos a month; paymaster, 120; corporal first class, 150; corporal second class, 52. 50; and guards, 33. 75.²⁸ Even though Rurales furnished their own horses, uniforms, and equipment, their pay remained considerably higher than that received by men of equal rank in the regular army.²⁹ For example, rural police guards received 405 pesos a year,³⁰ as against only 162 pesos for an army cavalryman.³¹ (However, the soldier was furnished his horse and equipment.) The difference in pay indicates that from their inception the Rurales were intended to be a favored, if not elite, organization.

The federal government appointed the senior officers, who might recruit their own corporals second class and troops. The latter were to be solicited by newspaper advertisements, all enlistments being voluntary.³² The guards were to wear gray woolen jackets and vests, the jacket trimmed in red about the neck and along the cuffs of the sleeves, and leather trousers of Mexican style, slit down the lower half of each leg with the opening closed by buttons. Around the crown of the sombrero would be a white ribbon inscribed with the number of the corps in which the guard served. In addition to his horse, each volunteer had to provide his own saddle, a gray saddle blanket, bridle, bit, and equipment for maintaining his horse. Each guard was supposed to carry a percussion musket, a lance, and a sword. The decree authorized commanders to organize cooperative funds among their men, each guard allocating a certain portion of his pay for the purchase of equipment which could then be standardized and bought wholesale.³³ More than a decade passed, however, before the Rurales achieved any degree of uniformity in dress and equipment. They never carried the lances called for in the Juárez decree, and percussion muskets soon became obsolete.

In order that the new organization could be put to work at once, the War Ministry redesignated existing military units as rural police corps. Quesada and his 200 men became the First Corps and were dispatched to patrol the Veracruz-Mexico City roadway.³⁴ Cuellar was ordered to rename his resguardo the Second Rural Police Corps and to conform to regulations outlined in the decree. He refused, explaining that his men were being paid forty pesos monthly as members of the resguardo, whereas they would receive only 35.75 a month as Rurales. However, he agreed to comply if the War Ministry would continue to pay forty pesos monthly and allow the unit to retain its designation as resguardo. Otherwise he would retire and let his men join the Rurales if they wished. The Ministry insisted that the resguardo adhere to the decree, even at the expense of losing an experienced commander like Cuellar, but newspapers editorialized in his favor, and Cuellar won his point. There is no further mention of a Second Rural Police Corps in the press of that period, but Cuellar continued to lead his resguardo, which later fought the French in Puebla and Oaxaca, suffering defeats, but refusing to disband.³⁵ By the fall of 1861 the Fourth Rural Police Corps was patrolling the highway from Querétaro to Mexico City, but further development of the Rurales did not occur until after the French Intervention.³⁶

While the Juárez administration was organizing the Rurales, the relentless pressure applied by the still formidable Conservative forces and the new threat of foreign invasion forced the War Ministry to employ most units, regular army and para-military, in an all-out defense of the republic. The corps of Quesada and Cuellar served as the vanguards for regular army brigades. Their mission was to protect the main column from ambush by flushing out the enemy guerrillas, if possible. To do this, they deliberately exposed themselves to the enemy, trying to draw them from the security of their mountain hideouts.³⁷

Quesada’s corps served in the forward elements of the federal army during August and October 1861 when it dealt important defeats to Conservative forces commanded by Leonardo Márquez and Félix Zuloaga. A young officer named Porfirio Díaz led the forward elements of the army in those telling victories, and perhaps it was then that the president-to-be learned the value of a first class rural police force in combating the enemy, whether bandit or political foe.³⁸

The Fourth Corps under Francisco M. Salazar appears to have been the only one that performed duties intended for Rurales, and its initial efforts were not impressive. While escorting a stagecoach, the Fourth encountered bandits near Tula. When a trooper shouted that the enemy was flanking the corps, the Rurales broke formation and ran; in the melee that followed thirty of them died. As a result, Salazar later faced a board of inquiry in Mexico City, but he must have been vindicated, for he remained commander of the corps.³⁹

In considering personnel for the rural police, the government recognized that many men who had defended the Liberal cause during the civil war were of unsavory background, and it ordered unit commanders to weed out the worst of these.⁴⁰ There is no evidence of a deliberate attempt to recruit bandits into the Rurales at this time, but certainly a good many former highwaymen must have been found in the ranks.

Like most other Mexican police and military forces in this period, the Rurales made free use of the law that allowed them to execute bandits or political enemies of the regime after only perfunctory legal process.⁴¹ They also probably used Ley Fuga—the execution of a prisoner on the invented grounds of attempted escape. In an apparent example of the latter, Quesada’s force mortally wounded a priest (said to be the confessor of Márquez), when he allegedly tried to flee their custody.⁴²

The Rurales obviously suffered grave shortcomings, but in late 1861 the War Ministry had neither the time nor the money to perfect them, and as the foreign intervention gained impetus in 1862, they were amalgamated into the regular army, either individually or as units.

During the French Intervention (1862-1867) Mexico’s Imperial government struggled with security problems like those which had harassed earlier Mexican administrations. When police organized by local authorities proved incapable of fulfilling their duties, Emperor Maximilian in 1865 placed rural and urban police forces throughout the country under the supervision of the central government.⁴³ His edicts placed the rural units in about the same position as the Juárez Rurales of 1861. Despite the reorganization, the Empire’s security plan failed, for personnel in the forces proved unreliable, and their uniforms and equipment ended up with Republican rebels. In 1866, seeking once more to improve the system, the Imperial government established a civil guard, and shortly thereafter a special military commission drew detailed plans for installation of the so-called “Prussian System” in Mexico. This would have mobilized all the nation’s manpower for military and security purposes, but the War Minister vetoed the plan. He noted that discipline was the integral quality of the Prussian program, an attribute that Mexicans lacked after fifty years of revolts, and predicted that such a system would only provide further armed defectors for the rebels.⁴⁴

After the French Intervention many former guerrillas preferred to continue their free, lawless way of life rather than settle down to profitless labors, routine, and monotony. Accordingly, public security conditions in Mexico were no better than in 1861 after the civil war.⁴⁵ The need to reduce the national army quickly added significantly to the instability. The country did not need and its treasury could not afford the standing army of some 60,000 men that had ended the Intervention; therefore, the government cut it to 20,000 men, enough to insure internal peace and repel a foreign invasion if necessary.⁴⁶ The discharge of so many able and ambitious men flooded the Mexican labor market at a time when no jobs existed, for lack of investment capital and stability. The result was restlessness, discontent, then banditry and insurrection.⁴⁷

Striving for order, on July 30, 1867, War Minister Ignacio Mejía directed military commanders of the various states to organize local forces and patrol roads in their respective districts.⁴⁸ Military units were also pressed into security service as had been done in 1861. Meanwhile, the administration began to reorganize the rural police force. On September 8 Minister Mejía designated four units from the Tlaxcala Army Brigade as the First Rural Police Corps. Colonel Anastasio Roldán took command, and General Antonio Rodríguez Bocardo, the former brigade commander, became subinspector. With twenty-five officers and 260 guards, the corps was assigned to secure the roads from Puebla to Orizaba and Jalapa.⁴⁹

The three other corps authorized in the rural police decree of 1861 were reestablished in 1868. On July 5, General Cuellar’s former Commercial Security Guard was reconstituted as the Second Corps, with nineteen officers and 225 guards to patrol the Riofrío road between the capital and Puebla. On August 14 General Carbajal’s force of forty-five officers and 200 soldiers became the Third Corps, assigned to the Apam region. The Fifth Corps was organized in Tlalpán by Colonel José María Escalona on May 22, 1868, as the Security Guard of Mexico and designated a rural police corps on October 15. It had thirteen officers and 150 guards and took responsibility for the route between Cuernavaca and the capital.⁵⁰

These were years of incessant rebellions as well as brigandage—for example, in Yucatán, where remnants of a pro-imperial force landed from Cuba in 1867, and in Sinaloa, where a gubernatorial election was contested by arms in early 1868. Aureliano Rivera suddenly defeated in the sierra of Ajusco (state of México) and carried with him into rebellion some of the guards from the Fifth Rural Corps with whom he had worked in 1861 as commander of a security force battling bandits in and near the Federal District. Gangs, some numbering hundreds of men, terrorized mountainous regions around Tulancingo in Hidalgo and Chignahuapán and Zazatlán in the state of Puebla. Brigand chieftains, such as Luis León, Honorato Domingues, Miguel Negrete, and Paulino Noriega, were well known, elusive, and unscrupulous.⁵¹

Under relentless public pressure to preserve civil order, the administration in 1868 recommended to Congress legislation to reinforce the Rurales and to suspend constitutional guarantees again for bandits. There was little opposition to increasing the annual budget of the rural police from 433,260 pesos to 500,000 pesos, but Congress balked at the idea of suspending legal guarantees which all Mexicans had just begun to enjoy again.⁵² Seeing no chance for immediate passage of a combined bill, the administration separated the measures, and on January 21, 1869, Congress passed the increased budget, 112 to 1. It also unanimously supported a proposal to make the Rurales solely dependent on the Gobernación Ministry, thereby eliminating the confusion caused by double responsibility to the Ministries of War and Gobernación.⁵³ Finally, on April 13, 1869, after a long and bitterly contested debate, Congress suspended the guarantees for armed bandits and kidnappers.⁵⁴

On April 1, 1869, the government reestablished an inspector general’s office within the Ministry of Gobernación to administer the Rurales.⁵⁵ Colonel Serapio Villalobos became the first inspector general; four years later the position went to General Juan M. Kampfner.⁵⁶ Under Kampfner and his four-man staff the Rurales expanded and became a widely recognized national security force. During this period Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada succeeded Juárez in the presidency, and the nation became relatively peaceful. When minor insurrections occurred, such as those of 1874-1875 in Michoacán, Jalisco, and Guanajuato, the army easily crushed them.

This political calm contributed to the development of the Rurales. By 1871 the organization included seven corps and three companies.⁵⁷ The Fourth Corps was founded in Tlalpán on July 1, 1871, under command of Colonel Antonio Carrión. At the time, the government designated it as the Seventh Corps, but it became the Fourth on July 1, 1872. Personnel of the Fourth matched the standard later set for all corps: a commander, administrator, paymaster, two corporals first class, eight corporals second class, and 125 guards. They covered the route from Mexico City to Ladrillera and the mountainous regions around Tlalpán, just south of the Federal District.⁵⁸

The Sixth Corps was created in Hidalgo as the Security Guard of Tepeji del Río, and in October of the same year it became part of the Third Rural Police Corps. A company of the Third was separated on May 11, 1869, to become the base of the new Sixth Corps. With thirteen officers and 150 regulars it patrolled the main route from Mexico City to San Juan del Río in the state of Querétaro.⁵⁹

Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Loayza commanded the Seventh Corps, which the Ministry put together on October 1, 1872, from a reserve cavalry corps of the army and the previously established reserve rural police company. General Kampfner divided its three officers and 124 troopers into detachments for Bata, Tula, San Antonio Tula, San Miguel de los Jagueyes, Tepeji del Río, and the hacienda de Cañada.⁶⁰

The government also established two company-size units: the Rural Company of Tampico and the Rural Company of Tepic. The Tampico unit, founded on July 15, 1870, consisted of three officers and fifty regulars. It patrolled major roads leading to Tampico, keeping them open to commerce, and inspected the port itself for contraband.⁶¹

The Tepic Company fought Manuel Lozada and his 9,000 fanatical followers who had kept western Mexico’s Tepic district in turmoil since the Intervention.⁶² The company, organized on September 15, 1867, was designed to contain the rebellious horde, but for five years it fought a slowly losing battle against Lozada. Suddenly in 1872 the unit itself adhered to Lozada’s principles and joined his revolt. This turn of events caused the administration to order regular army units to Tepic, and after a sharp struggle, the army restored order and placed the region under military occupation.⁶³

Experience taught that the rural police functioned most effectively as rapidly maneuvering cavalry detachments varying in size from ten men to half a corps.⁶⁴ At first detachments daily patrolled routes extending from a central headquarters and returned to their barracks at night; this practice, however, took too much time and exhausted the horses. Therefore, in 1873 detachments began to build or rent their own quarters within their respective assignment districts.⁶⁵

From 1870 to 1876 their duties generally remained the same— they guarded major roads leading to the capital from Cuernavaca, Toluca, and Veracruz by way of Puebla. When the Mexico-Veracruz railroad was inaugurated in January 1873, protection of the line became an important assignment. Often the troops received special duties: to assist the army in combatting guerrillas politically opposed to the government; to escort a convoy of treasury funds or federal munitions ; or to serve as special guards for diplomats, dignitaries, or the president himself. On occasion a detachment would be assigned to protect a particular ranch threatened by bandits.⁶⁶

The nature of their assignments often placed them in conflict with hacendados, political leaders, or the entire citizenry of a town or district. They could not help but earn the ire of the townspeople of Cuajimalpa, state of México, when the inspector general ordered them to stop those villagers from drawing water from the aqueduct that carried water through the town to Mexico City.⁶⁷ Frequently municipal officials petitioned Rurales to police an election, and they preserved order during the often raucous balloting.⁶⁸ Such duties inevitably led to charges that Rurales had meddled in elections. The Mexico City newspaper, El Eco de Ambos Mundos, claimed that the commander and officers of the Fifth Corps worked openly for the reelection of the governor of Morelos. The commander denied the allegations but defended the right of his officers as individuals to support their political choices.⁶⁹ But friction also developed between Rurales and authorities in the Federal District when the rural police declined to favor the choices of these officials in local elections.⁷⁰

The relationship between the Rurales and local authorities might be strained in other ways. At times officials used the Rurales as their personal police force or gave them other assignments foreign to their proper duties.⁷¹ As a result, state and local authorities did not always receive Rurales when they requested them. For example, the governor of Tamaulipas asked the federal government to grant him direct control over the Rurales in his state on the grounds that they committed various abuses when not subject to local authority. The Minister of Gobernación rather curtly responded that the suggested relationship could only lead to controversy, and that the rural police were perfectly suited for their road patrol work and required no supervision by state officials.⁷²

While the guards preserved public order repercussions were unavoidable. Late in 1873, when Indians, stimulated by the exhortations of priests, murdered Protestants and plundered their homes in the state of México, Rurales were ordered to quell the riots. In the process, they killed perhaps one hundred Indians, an incident that aroused brutality charges against the rural police. The corps commander involved denied these allegations and in a letter to a Mexico City newspaper asked the public to withhold its judgment in the matter until it knew all the facts.⁷³

The Rurales should not be excused for their abuses, however, and for at least some excesses they were punished. When the commander of the unit near Chaleo, state of México, gravely wounded a peon without provocation, he was discharged from the Rurales and remanded to local judicial authorities.⁷⁴ Complaints against Rurales by the prefect of Tacubaya, in the Federal District, led to replacement of the corps commander in that sector.⁷⁵

In other cases local authorities unjustly criticized the Rurales, because they did not care to have a federal police unit patrolling their municipality. This situation occurred in Tampico, where ranking citizens seem to have been involved in smuggling. In that city the rural police were accused of inefficiency, negligence, and meddling in affairs outside their duties. An investigation by the inspector general failed to substantiate such charges, and the rural police unit remained at its post.⁷⁶ In another incident, several leading citizens of Contadero, in the Federal District, charged that Rurales had mistreated local townspeople and warned that the citizenry was about to take the matter into its own hands. They claimed that guards had seized the private property of citizens in order to build homes for themselves and their families and had stolen cattle and poultry from local farms. The corps commander responded that Rurales were not wanted in Contadero because they were protecting the general citizenry from an oppressive upper class. Accompanying his reply was a series of affidavits from local people certifying to the good behavior of the Rurales and praising them for having financed and built a school in the district.⁷⁷

Rural police officers also complained to their inspector general that rather than cooperating in the arrest of criminals, some municipal officials not only impeded their efforts but also actively supported the highwaymen. The corps commander at Tacuba, within the Federal District, related in 1871 that no sooner had he delivered two bandits to the local judge than they were freed. Indeed, the brigands cordially greeted the commander later as they passed by his headquarters. The townspeople warned bandits of the Rurales’ movements, continued the commander, and the law was not enforced because the authorities and criminals were kin to one another.⁷⁸

Despite serious shortcomings in the organization, the Rurales had some success in containing banditry, especially in such notorious districts as Monte de las Cruces near Toluca, Huichilaque (outside Cuernavaca), and Riofrío in Puebla.⁷⁹ In general, however, banditry and sensational kidnappings continued to stir the Republic. Merchants feared to travel many of the roads, and landowners in remote districts sought the security of cities. But even the cities were not safe, for as the Rurales rooted the thieves from their mountain hideouts, the criminals secreted themselves in crowded urban districts, including those of Mexico City.⁸⁰

As a result of the many kidnappings, the administration asked congress to extend the suspension of constitutional guarantees for kidnappers and armed robbers. Congress complied. The law permitted the Rurales to execute without trial criminals caught in the act of armed robbery or kidnapping. Although official reports of the Gobernación Minister do not reflect it, the Rurales frequently exercised this authority.⁸¹ For example, on July 8, 1872, the Fourth Corps caught two kidnappers on the Cuernavaca road and executed them.⁸² In May 1875, other rural policemen captured six highwaymen in an hacienda in Guanajuato and shot them.⁸³ According to the law, no such executions were to take place until reports of the defendent’s alleged crime had been forwarded to an authority who had power to grant pardons. This requirement amounted to a mandatory appellate procedure, but Rurales at times executed captives without observing it. Such infractions brought investigations by the inspector general’s office, but there is no indication that Rurales were ever punished for violating the statute.⁸⁴ In the great majority of cases, however, Rurales who captured a criminal turned the prisoner over to local authorities in accordance with the regulations of the rural police force.⁸⁵

There were also charges that the Rurales used Ley Fuga, although General Kampfner denied the accusations. Such was a case of July 1875, involving the bandits Manuel Blanco and Cayetano Suárez. Kampfner said that the Rurales had captured the criminals, but had turned them over to an escort which was to deliver them to political authorities in Chaleo. It was this escort force that applied Ley Fuga and not the Rurales.⁸⁶

In this instance the inspector may have been correct. Local authorities or security forces at times applied Ley Fuga to prisoners left in their custody by Rurales—but the rural police received the blame for the deed. Yet the Rurales undoubtedly understood the use of Ley Fuga. In October, 1875 they created a furor by killing Colonel Máximo Molina in Michoacán. An inveterate liberal who had proved his patriotism against the French invaders, Molina was hunted down and shot without trial or hearing. Mexico City newspapers called it a wanton political assassination. The government countered that Molina was a bandit who resisted arrest, and rewarded with cash the rural police who had killed him. Ley Fuga? Application of the law of guarantees? Or death while resisting arrest? A rather thin line separates the three, and available information does not answer the questions. Circumstances surrounding the deed, however, leave the Rurales suspect.⁸⁷

Critics also attacked the rural police as a band of ex-brigands. Enlistment continued to be voluntary, and the men could select their term of service with a one-year minimum. Most contracted for two years and needed two letters of recommendation for acceptance.⁸⁸ Officers often were army transfers.⁸⁹ The Gobernación Minister told Congress in 1874 that the advantages of becoming a Rural had become common knowledge, especially in regard to pay, and that “today highly honorable and able citizens wish to join. . .”⁹⁰ But the fact is that many who wished to join, or actually did enlist, were hardly “highly honorable citizens.” The Tampico corps commander noted that an applicant from his district had aligned himself in 1871 with the Díaz revolt of La Noria, was now recommended for rural police service by reputed cattle thieves and hoped to use the unit for his personal political ends.⁹¹ Among the men serving as Rurales in 1869, six got drunk, attempted to rob several stagecoaches, and turned to banditry.⁹²

But did the Rurales, as has been claimed, deliberately recruit highwaymen for service? In November 1875 the inspector general received complaints from Tampico that some guards with past histories of banditry had left their corps to resume old habits at the expense of travelers, small towns, and farms. The corps commander denied having enlisted men with criminal backgrounds and said that such rumors had been invented by Tampiqueños allegedly involved in smuggling who did not want rural police in the port city.⁹³

At one time the Rurales, either under Juárez or during the early years of Lerdo’s administration, did solicit bandits for police duty. Precisely when this occurred is not clear, but the practice was said to have ended by 1875. According to the Boletín de la Policía Rural, “In times of disorder some thought criminals would best be combatted, especially in underpopulated areas, by other criminals. This homeopathic system applied to police brought sad results. It was not infrequent that guards assigned as Rurales to patrol one section of the road later appeared in a different sector in their more natural character (as thieves), assaulting some traveler whom they had previously pretended to protect.”⁹⁴

In 1875 Kampfner insisted that his guards had good personal histories. What they lacked, he said, was a formal education and a sense of duty. They possessed natural qualities to be excellent rural policemen, he continued, but these qualities needed to be developed along with a better understanding concerning the essential nature of their duties as Rurales.⁹⁵

The inspector general’s assertions about the caliber of personnel enlisted in the Rurales were less than forthright. Desertions persistently disrupted the organization. One second lieutenant, sworn in on March 4, 1872, deserted within six weeks, taking his horse and equipment with him ; perhaps he had joined only to steal a mount and rifle.⁹⁶ There were also continuing discharges for drunkenness and addiction to prostitutes.⁹⁷ Arrests for crimes—fighting, stealing, even murder—were not uncommon. By regulation, local civil courts handled such cases, and conviction meant automatic discharge from the Rurales.⁹⁸

The personal character of many officers was also questionable. When one guard saw his commanding officer whipping a blameless woman with a tree branch, he protested and in return received several blows from the flat of the officer’s sword. In the investigation that ensued, the inspector general reprimanded the officer and ordered him to punish no more of his men. If he encountered a discipline problem, he was to arrest the offender and refer the case to the inspector general’s office, where it would be settled.⁹⁹

Outright rebellions of entire units against the government occurred frequently enough to raise further questions about the quality of personnel. On October 1, 1871, seventeen guards stationed in Tacuba revolted; three surrendered, three were captured, and the remainder scattered.¹⁰⁰ The detachment at Huitziban revolted in June, 1872, killed its commander, and joined bandits in the surrounding mountains.¹⁰¹ Then came the defection of the entire Tepic Company to Lozada’s standard.

Service in the rural police had its advantages, and these undoubtedly attracted some capable personnel. The organization enjoyed considerable prestige. When Mexico City’s Constitucional in 1874 attacked the force, alleging a series of shortcomings and abuses, the prestigious Monitor Republicano reprimanded its colleague and advised giving the police their “just due. . .. They are fulfilling their duty as Rurales, and as long as they do this, we can only praise them and their commanders.”¹⁰²

The Rurales also received higher pay than their regular army counterparts—in 1871 army cavalrymen earned 162 pesos a year,¹⁰³ compared to 360 pesos for a rural policeman.¹⁰⁴ Four years later the army regulars were still received only 184.50 pesos annually,¹⁰⁵ while pay budgeted to rural guards had increased to 505 pesos.¹⁰⁶ In the fiscal year 1875-1876 alone, salaries for rural guards improved by 100 pesos.¹⁰⁷ The pay of rural police officers generally surpassed that of army officers, although the difference in amounts was not as marked as among enlisted ranks.¹⁰⁸ In all cases, to be sure, the Rurales, unlike army cavalrymen, had to furnish their own horses, uniforms, and equipment. Still the salary gap between the two forces remained appreciable. Good pay and capable rural police administrators were intended to guarantee good conduct of the men.¹⁰⁹

Inspector General Kampfner recognized the need for regulation and uniformity in his police contingents, but the original decree left out many details concerning organization and equipment, responsibilities, and privileges. Therefore, in 1874 three generals were chosen to draw a detailed code for the corps, but Kampfner’s death in November 1875, followed closely by the rebellion of Porfirio Díaz, interrupted the project.¹¹⁰

Despite the lack of an official guide, General Kampfner had proved himself a dedicated administrator. From 1872 to 1876 he standardized and improved the quality of equipment and arms, and trimmed units to their authorized size. He reduced the number of guards from 927 in 1871 to 904 in 1875,¹¹¹ although he never successfully coped with the substantial annual turnover caused by short enlistments, desertions, and frequent discharges of unfit personnel. Kampfner also assigned more realistic areas of responsibility to each corps and managed to reduce the annual budget from 499,374.80 pesos in 1871 to 472,133.80 in 1875.¹¹²

When Díaz rebelled in 1876, the administration pressed Rurales into military service. But not all of the units remained loyal. General Antonio Rodríguez Bocardo, who earlier had been subinspector of the First Corps, helped raise an army for Díaz and died fighting for the future president.¹¹³ Also, General Jesús Alonso, who commanded the First Corps at the crucial battle of Puebla, defected to the Porfiristas.¹¹⁴ Finally, Díaz shattered the federals, including many Rurales, in the battle of Tecoac on November 1, 1876. Twenty days later the Sixth Rurales defected to Díaz on the very night when it was supposed to escort Lerdo to safety from Mexico City.¹¹⁵ The Seventh recognized the Plan of Tuxtepec on November 26, 1876,¹¹⁶ and the Fifth joined Díaz on the day he entered the capital.¹¹⁷ Soon afterward the remaining corps followed suit.

Porfirio Díaz had been conscious of Mexico’s public security needs even before his revolution succeeded. On October 10, 1876, he decreed that military commanders and political chiefs could summarily execute robbers, highwaymen, and kidnappers caught in the act.¹¹⁸ About the same time Díaz named Pedro A. González inspector general of the Rurales and ordered him to reorganize the mounted police in accordance with the Juárez decree of 1861.¹¹⁹ To remnants of former rural police units González added various detachments which had fought in widespread campaigns for Díaz, and by December 1876 he had pieced together eight corps.¹²⁰ The entire force commanded by González acted as a reserve cavalry division in the early 1877 operations in the state of Querétaro against José María Iglesias, another contender for the presidency.¹²¹ The Fourth Rural Corps served Iglesias for a short period before turning to Díaz,¹²² but by late spring each corps had received its regular road patrol assignment. Duties corresponded to those of the former units, although the government placed several corps on special assignment with military commanders.¹²³ González and his staff then went to work to improve the organization by preparing regulations which would set standards and regulate performance.

The Rurales established a lasting reputation during the Porfiriato, but they were not an innovation of that regime. Independent Mexico’s first attempts to establish a federally financed rural police organization occurred during the administrations of Ignacio Comonfort and Benito Juárez, but continuing domestic and foreign strife during their presidencies impeded the efforts and blunted the results. Growth of the Rurales during the presidency of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada was marked by some success in curbing banditry but also by administrative failures and abuses in practice that gave the force a mixed record.

Porfirio Díaz was the first to take full advantage of a rural police force. He did not greatly augment its size ; yet it seemed to become significantly more effective. Or did it? If so, how was this accomplished? Did Díaz deliberately mold bandits into Rurales? Did he sanction the widespread use of Ley Fugai Were the Rurales assassins, national heroes—or both? And how important were they to the maintenance of the Díaz regime ? These are questions for further study, but what we already know suggests that the Rurales did not suddenly become a different kind of organization with the advent of the Porfiriato. Much of the institution’s future was inherited from its past. Change came slowly, and only by the 1890s did it begin to function as planned. The traditional picture of the Rurales under Díaz appears to have been romanticized and distorted, based on attitudes toward the dictatorship rather than on a knowledge of the rural police. It is hoped that continuing investigation will revise this image and place the Rurales in their proper historical perspective.

Author notes