Rurales

Rurales (Spanish for "Rurals") was the name commonly used to designate the Mexican Guardia Rural (Rural Guard): a force of mounted police or gendarmerie that existed between 1861 and 1914. In modern Mexico the name is applied to members of the part-time Rural Defense Corps.

Guardia Rural

A detachment of Mexican Rurales in field uniform during the Diaz era.

This force was established as a federal constabulary by the Liberal regime of Benito Juárez in 1861. The Guardia Rural became best known during the long rule of President Porfirio Díaz (1877–1911).

As originally constituted the Rurales were too weak in numbers and organisation to effectively control the widespread banditry in Mexico during the 1860s and 70s. The concept of an armed and mobile rural police, organised on military lines, was derived from the Spanish Civil Guard ("Guardia Civil"), which had been established in 1844 and quickly won a reputation as an effective but often oppressive force.

The existing Corps of Rurales was incorporated into the Republican Army and irregular forces opposing the French intervention of 1862–67. However the Imperial regime of Archduke Maximilian created a parallel force known as the Resguardo, which by October 1865 numbered 12,263;^[1] indicating that the concept of a rural mounted police force was now well established. Following the Republican victory, Los Cuerpos Rurales were re-established.

President Porfirio Díaz had expanded the Rurales from a few hundred to nearly 2,000 by 1889 as part of his programme of modernization and eventually repression. Initially some captured bandits were forcibly recruited into the Rurales, although the basis of enlistment later became more conventional. Officers were usually seconded from the Federal Army. The Rurales were heavily armed, carrying sabres, carbines and pistols. They were divided into ten corps, each comprising three companies of about 76 men.

The image of the Rurales as a ruthless and efficient organisation, which seldom took prisoners under the notorious ley fuga and inevitably got its man, was deliberately fostered under the Porfirian regime. However, research by Professor Paul J. Vanderwood during the 1970s involving detailed examination of the records of the corps indicated that the Rurales were neither as effective nor as brutal as regime publicists had suggested. The daily pay of 1.30 pesos was not high and up to 25% of recruits deserted before completing their four year enlistments.^[2] Never numbering more than about 4,000 men located in small detachments, the Rurales were too thinly spread to ever completely eliminate unrest in the Mexican countryside. They did however impose a superficial order, especially in the central regions around Mexico City, which encouraged the foreign investment sought by Díaz and his científico advisers. To a certain extent the regime saw the Rurales as a counterweight to the much larger Federal army and in the later years of the regime they were increasingly used to control industrial unrest, in addition to their traditional task of patrolling country areas.^[3]

The Rurales achieved a high profile internationally, rather like that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Texas Rangers, whose roles they paralleled. They wore a distinctive grey uniform braided in silver, which was modelled on the national charro dress and included a wide sombrero and red or black necktie. This dress, their frequent involvement in ceremonial parades and their general reputation invariably drew the attention of foreign visitors to Mexico during the Porfiriato. They were variously described as "the world's most picturesque policemen" and "mostly bandits". The former may have true but the latter was a distorted memory of the rough and ready early days of the corps. Some of the Mexican states maintained their own rural mounted police forces and there was an efficient city police in Mexico City, but none matched the Federal Rurales in notoriety or glamour.

A graphical timeline is available at Timeline of the Mexican Revolution

After the overthrow of Díaz, the Rurales continued to exist under Presidents Francisco I. Madero and Victoriano Huerta. Madero's intention seems to have been that the force should remain essentially unchanged, though with the abuses of the Diaz years curbed. In practice the induction of large numbers of Maderista fighters on a temporary basis while awaiting discharge simply diluted such efficiency as the corps had retained. Huerta saw a more central role for the Rurales using a detachment to murder Madero after the "Ten Tragic Days" of 1913. He then proposed to expand the existing units into a field force of over ten thousand men serving alongside the regular Federal troops. Recruiting and desertion problems prevented this ever being a realistic project and the remains of the Guardia Rural, along with the old Federal army, were finally disbanded in July 1914 when Huerta fled into exile.^[4]

Cuerpo de Defensa Rural

Today's Rurales are a part-time militia called the Cuerpo de Defensa Rural (Rural Defense Corps), originally formed as village self defence groups during the agrarian disturbances of the 1920s. They do not have any functions that parallel those of the paramilitary mounted police force of the 1861–1914 era. This corps was formally organized under army jurisdiction according to the Organic Law of 1926. Its origins, however, date back to the period when the revolutionary agrarian reform program was first implemented in 1915. In efforts to protect themselves against the private armies of recalcitrant large landowners, rural peasants organized themselves into small defense units and were provided weapons by the revolutionary government. Until 1955 enlistment in the Rural Defense Force was restricted to peasants working on collective farms (ejidos). After 1955 participation in the Rural Defense Force was expanded to include small farmers and laborers. All defense units, however, were attached to ejidos, possibly as a means to guarantee control.

The Rural Defense Force numbered some 120,000 in 1970, but was being phased out in the 1990s. The IISS's The Military Balance listed the corps as having only 14,000 members in 1996. The volunteers, aged eighteen to fifty, enlist for a three-year period. Members do not wear uniforms or receive pay for their service but are eligible for limited benefits. They are armed with outmoded rifles, which may be the chief inducement to enlist. Rudimentary training is provided by troops assigned to military zone detachments.

The basic unit is the platoon ( pelotón ) of eleven members under immediate control of the ejido . Use of the unit outside the ejidos is by order of the military zone commander. One asset of the corps is the capacity of its members to gather intelligence about activities within the ejidos and in remote rural areas seldom patrolled by military zone detachments. Corps members also act as guides for military patrols, participate in civic-action projects, and assist in destroying marijuana crops and preventing the transport of narcotics through their areas.

The Rurales in fiction

The Rurales make an appearance in O. Henry's short story, "Hostages to Momus". O. Henry, writing through the first-person narration of the character Tecumseh Pickens, gives a colorful sketch of the Rurales:

"Rurales? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental crayon portraits of the worthy constable with a tin star and a gray goatee. The rurales---well, if we'd mount our Supreme Court on broncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe et al. we'd have about the same thing."

References

1. ^ Rene Chartrand, page 23 "The Mexican Adventure 1861-67", ISBN 1 85532 430 X
2. ^ Paul J.Vanderwood, page 101 "Disorder and Progress - Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development", ISBN 0 8420 2438 7
3. ^ Page 120, "Disorder and Progress - Bandits, Police and Mexican Development", Paul J. Vanderwood ISBN 0 8420 2439 5
4. ^ The Mexican Revolution 1910-20, P. Jowett & A. de Quesada ISBN 1 84176 989 4

See also

• Mexican Revolution
• Federales

External links

• Library of Congress Country Study on Mexico Rurales article