Social Banditry: The Real Sherwood Forest

New Sherwood Forest

When people first hear the word social bandit they immediately jump to thoughts of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. While these fictional men were good examples of social bandits these types of individuals existed in reality all over the south west during the 1800’s. From Joaquin Murrieta to Juan Cortina most social bandits got their start because of social injustice in their community forcing them to become outlaws. Most of them were revered as honorable and admirable men who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor in quite the same manner that Robin Hood did in the famous book he’s named after.

A Social Bandit in its most simple definition is someone who commits crimes while also serving a higher justice. In Eric Hobsbawm

book Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels he states that, “Social banditry is a universal and virtually unchanging phenomenon, is little more than endemic peasant protest against oppression and poverty.” Social bandits are willing to take up the mantle for the community around them and fight against injustice in the names of those unable to fight against it themselves. Social bandits did things that were not viewed as crimes to their local community but were still crimes to their local or state government. This elevated their status within the community while still earning them the title of outlaws where the law was concerned.
Joaquin Murrieta, also known as the Mexican Robin Hood was a social bandit from California around the time of the gold rush who would later become the inspiration for the character Zorro.

Murrieta came to California during the gold rush after earning himself a land claim and began working the land. However, Murrieta was run off his claim after the foreign mining tax went into effect in California. He then turned to a life of crime; he and his gang of 5 Joaquins began to prey on the same people that forced him off his claim. They were responsible for cattle rustling, robberies, and murders that occurred during the gold rush area in the Sierra Nevadas between 1850 and 1853. At the end of their run it is said that they took over one hundred horses, one hundred and ninety thousand dollars in gold, and killed around twenty people. In 1853 the California legislators passed a bill funding twenty newly formed California Rangers to hunt down the gang paying one hundred and fifty dollars a month with a governor bonus of one thousand dollars if they captured Murrieta. Murrieta was killed in July 1853 and his head was chopped off and preserved in a jar of brandy to claim the

reward.
Another social bandit, Juan Cortina also known as the Red Robber of the Rio Grande, and the Rio Grande Robin Hood.

Cortina was born into a wealthy ranching family with land in what is now southern Texas and north east Mexico. When he came of age he served in the Mexican army and fought in the Mexican American war. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 his family estate was divided with most of it being in Texas. The new local authorities invalidated some of his land claims, something that also happening to most Mexican land owners at this time. Cortina stood up for the Mexican land owners who lost their land because they were unfamiliar with the American legal system. This caused him to be charged twice with cattle theft. However, his popularity with the Mexican population kept him out of trouble. Sick of being treated like a lower class citizen in Texas Cortina recruited and trained a private army of his own in order to fight for the rights of the Mexican population residing within Texas. He used this army to stop evictions of Mexicans in Texas, he also started what is called the two Cortina wars which targeted Anglo settlers. In 1958 the Texas Rangers along with the United States Army put a stop to Cortina forcing him back into Mexico.

These two are just a few examples of social bandits that lived during that era of history. While both important they are just a drop in the bucket of what was going on in the southwest, most social bandits of this time had very short

runs as they were either killed or force to flee. Social bandits are a very important part of history and although in many cases their lives were cut short prematurely or their causes abandoned for fear of imprisonment the ideals they fought for were important nevertheles