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

IOR 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 Gobernacion, Jose Maria Lafragua, urged state governors to create whatever police forces they found necessary to secure lives and property in their respective states.' 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. The Rurales were to increase in both size and impact during the administrations of Benito Juarez and Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, and they received particular notoriety during the Porfiriato.