When laws serve the rich and powerful at the poor citizens’ expense, everyday people are forced to take matters into their own hands, becoming folk heroes.
Salvatore Giuliano
Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant turned outlaw. When Giuliano killed a police officer taking bribes for a bag of black-market grain in 1943, he escaped into the mountains.
There, he formed a gang that robbed landowners to help feed the impoverished local peasantry with money, food, and medicine. Giuliano battled against both the Italian government and the Mafia successfully for years.
Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly was a working-class bushman in 19th-century Australia whose family was harassed and persecuted by a corrupt police force employed by the British Crown.
Kelly took to the bush and formed a gang of outlaws that robbed banks and burned mortgage deeds to relieve poor farmers of their debt. Before his capture in a suit of crude iron armour, he penned an impassioned manifesto that humiliated the colonial authorities.
Lampião
Lampião was a regular farmer from the arid, poverty-stricken Northeastern backlands of Brazil, who became a bandit when a rich landowner killed his parents.
Lampião led his gang of criminals and dominated the hinterlands for almost twenty years, attacking big ranches and oppressive towns but never harming the poor settlements. Over the years, he grew to a romanticized folk-hero persona as he battled the national government, local tyrants, and countless armies of soldiers.
Carmine Crocco
Crocco was a poor farm worker who shot a nobleman for insulting his sister and became a famous outlaw leader in the 1860s in southern Italy. When Italy unified and began taxing the poor south heavily and sending their boys to fight in wars, Crocco assembled an army of peasants in the thousands.
Supported by locals who sheltered and fed his troops, he would take over entire towns, rob government stores, and battle the king’s army for years.
Chucho el Roto
Chucho el Roto was a poor Mexican cabinetmaker who was falsely imprisoned in the late 1800s after falling in love with a rich aristocrat’s daughter. Upon escaping, he became an infamous thief who robbed from the extremely rich upper class during the dictatorship of Porfirio DÃaz.
He donated his riches to build schools, open clinics, and pay legal punishments for poor citizens. He always escaped capture from state police in ingenious disguises.
JanoÅ¡Ãk
Juraj JanoÅ¡Ãk was a Slovak peasant who dropped out of studies to join an anti-Habsburg rebellion in the early 1700s. He then became the leader of robbers in the Carpathian Mountains.
He and his men would rob from rich traders, noble men, and even Habsburg bureaucrats, but never killed their victims. He donated the gold and silver to poor villagers in the mountains and is still revered as a folk hero against the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Phoolan Devi
Phoolan Devi grew up as a low-caste peasant girl in rural India. She escaped lifelong poverty and abuse by upper-caste landlords by taking to the ravines of Uttar Pradesh.
As the infamous “Bandit Queen”, she terrorized the countryside with her gang of bandits, looting rich villages and giving their plunder to poor peasants and the lower castes. She managed to dodge state militias for years and became a worldwide icon of defiance against a cruel system of social and legal inequality.
Louis Mandrin
Louis Mandrin was a regular French citizen who turned smuggler and folk hero in the 1750s when his brother was unfairly executed and his family business destroyed by tax collectors. He built a ruthlessly efficient private army.
Mandrin declared economic war on the reviled French king Louis XV’s tax agency. He seized entire towns, held public markets where smuggled goods were sold for low prices, and had royal officials pay to retrieve their confiscated goods.
Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa was a poor Mexican peasant who became an outlaw as a teenager after killing a rich rancher who raped his sister. While living as an outlaw in the Sierra Madre, he gained legendary status among the common people by robbing rich cattle bosses, sharing the spoils with villagers, and keeping food prices low.
Upon the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, his gang was transformed into a highly organized revolutionary army that crushed the despotic regime.
Twm Siôn Cati
Twm Siôn Cati was a 16th-century Welsh person who became a highway robber in the Carmarthenshire hills to avoid the corruption of the law. Famous for his witty, non-violent schemes against rich targets in outlandish costumes, he robbed covetous landlords, rich English traders, and high church officials.
He became so famous for robbing from the rich and giving to the poor Welsh peasantry that he was considered a folk hero and regularly embarrassed sheriffs representing the English monarchy.
Ishikawa Goemon
Ishikawa Goemon was a Japanese citizen who became an outlaw in the 16th century. He stole from rich lords and dishonest merchants.
Goemon lived under the tyrannical rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and was known for giving away his stolen gold, silver, and precious silks to poor peasants who were victims of exorbitant war taxes. Because of his courage against the samurai elite, Goemon is an immortal folk hero in Japanese legend.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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