Cardona
MPSA 2004
16
Gilibert’s influence shaped the National Police significantly during its first three
decades of existence, an orientation reflected in the institution’s affiliation with the
Ministry of Government. However, this affiliation was subject to change in conditions of
wartime. Indeed, during the civil wars of 1895 and 1899-1902, executive orders were
quickly passed that move the National Police from the Ministry of Government to the
Ministry of War, and deputized agents for the war effort on the side of government. In
essence, the National Police served as a national auxiliary for the Army during the
Regeneration.
Ultimately, however, the institutional affiliation of the National Police would
come to play an important role in the susceptibility of police agents to influence by
appointed politicians at the state and local levels. By emphasizing the civilist nature of
the police and seeking to separate it from military purview during peacetime,
Regeneration reformers ironically made these same forces available to civilian politicians
as their own private militias. In the state of undeclared civil war that reigned during the
1940s and 1950s, the availability of these forces to civilian authorities would ultimately
result in their acute politicization, moving them in the opposite direction from the
professionalization and impartiality of which Holguín dreamed.
The prioritization of designing adequate institutions of the public forces reflected
the overall orientation of the Regeneration project toward reestablishing social order,
even through authoritarian means (Martinez 2001: 470). The Regeneration represented a
total reversal of the federalist, anti-clericalist framework established by the 1863
constitution, and the Liberals did not accept this change easily. In the next two decades,
they engaged in two significant revolts against the Conservatives, one brief episode in
Convention