New research has helped develop profiles of bandits who operated in the setting of rural Mexico. The image of the young, rootless bandit with high aspirations for a just society is not borne out in the research. Before they turned to banditry, many individuals held a variety of rural occupation as cowhands, woodcutters, sugar cane and hay cutters, charcoal makers, and daily wage laborers. Many were middle-aged in a time of a short life span. The common denominator of banditry, according to many researchers, was poverty rather than a thirst for social and economic justice. Instead of developing a bond to the poor, most bandits preferred to ally themselves with influential power groups, which had the means to hire their services, shield their activities, and purchase their booty. The myths associated with bandits, however, met a social need among the poor and oppressed. The poor and disenfranchised imagined bandits to be revolutionaries who sought to overturn oppressive powers and usher in a new age of social and economic justice. Oppressive government authorities feared bandits for this reason, not because they posed an actual threat to the government, but because they were symbols to the peasants of a revolutionary movement. Governments aggressively sought to destroy bandits because of their revolutionary symbolism for peasants. 92 notes