While their performance was uneven - with charges being made of both aggressive behavior against the public and slackness in enforcing their responsibilities[5] - the rural guards had been successful in eliminating a number of bandit groups.

The Porfirian regime deliberately fostered the image of the Rurales as a ruthless and efficient organization which – under the notorious ley fuga ("law of flight") – seldom took prisoners and which inevitably got its man.

[5] 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.

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.

[13] Senior officers wore elaborate rank insignia in the form of Austrian knots and sombrero braiding, which cost hundreds of pesos.

The grey and silver dress, the frequent involvement of Rurales in ceremonial parades and their general reputation, drew the attention of foreign visitors to Mexico during the Porfiriato.

While retaining an elite image (one revolutionary fighter commented to a US writer that Rurales never surrendered "because they are police", and a report to the U.S. Army rated them as individually superior to any of Pancho Villa's irregulars),[17] the force was too weak in numbers and dispersed in deployment to play a decisive role.

Madero left the force essentially unchanged, although introducing legislation intended to prevent corpsmen, other than senior officers, from carrying out summary executions without due trial process.

[18] 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.

Three hundred rural guardsmen of the 18th Corps were ambushed by rebel machine gunners in the centre of Mexico City, losing 67 dead and wounded.

It is uncertain whether the destruction of the 18th Corps was the result of a tactical blunder or a measure deliberately arranged by General Huerta to weaken the Madero forces.

[20] Huerta then proposed to expand the existing Rurale units into a field force of over ten thousand men serving alongside the regular Federal troops.