Mexico's Liberals had defeated the Conservatives, but…
May 1861 CE
Juárez is forced to grant amnesty to captured Conservative guerrillas still resisting the Juárez government, even though they had executed captured Liberals, including Melchor Ocampo and Santos Degollado.
Many brigands and bandits had allied themselves with the Liberal cause during the civil war. With that conflict concluded, many had became guerrillas and bandits again, when the government jobs they demanded as rewards for their services to the Republic were not forthcoming.
In the wake of the civil war and the demobilization of combatants, Juárez's Minister of the Interior, Francisco Zarco, oversees the founding of the rurales.
The force is aimed at establishing public security, particularly as banditry and rural unrest grow.
The creation of the police force controlled by the president is done quietly because it violates federalist principles of traditional Liberalism, which give little power to the central government and much to Mexican states.
The force's creation is an indication that Juárez is becoming more of a centralist as he confronts rural unrest.
As a pragmatic solution, the force consists of former bandits converted into policemen.
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