Origin The origins of the Civil Guard date back to 1873, when President
Manuel Pardo approved and signed two Supreme Decrees on December 31 of 1873 (published in
El Peruano, the Peruvian Government's official newspaper, on January 28, 1874) and March 23, 1874, respectively, providing for its creation. It also refers to "urban and rural stations and of the Regular Police Force divided into Gendarmerie and the Civil Guards, respectively", thus the decrees formally marked the birth of the service. That same year, Congress reported that Civil Guards units would commence their duties in every part of the nation. On November 9, 1874, President
Manuel Pardo opened the
Civil Guard Instruction School, whose first cadets made up a 50-men company within the Lima Infantry Gendarmerie Battalion.
Reorganization The Civil Guard was reorganized several times, with its first time being in 1919, under
Augusto B. Leguía's administration. The purpose of the reorganization was to reinvent its public image and to modernize the unit, modelling it after its
Spanish counterpart. . The August 18, 1924 decree established the 1st Joint Command of the Civil Guard, with an Infantry Battalion, composed of two companies, and a Cavalry Squadron (formed on the basis of the former mounted police). Its duties began the same month, with its first personnel enlisted in 1925, detached from the two Civil Guards infantry companies' headquarters to the San Lazaro Barracks located at Matamoros Street, in the Rimac and the Cavalry Squadron's headquarters would be at Conchucos in the Barrios Altos, Lima, headquarters that the coming years would become the headquarters of the Cavalry Squadron of the Police and Civil Guard Guardsman's School until the end of 1965 when they moved to the Civil Guard Instruction Center (now the National Police Officer's School) Mariano Santos in the district of La Campiña, Chorrillos. The 1st Command would move to new quarters on 1644 28 July Avenue on January 16, 1937. The Civil Guard Second Command, the customs police arm of the Civil Guard, would be raised on August 1, 1925, by virtue of a Supreme Decree. Its baptism of fire came in 1927 while fighting the forces of local rebel Eleodoro Benel Zuloeta in Cutervo Province and later while fighting warlords in Cajamarca. Due to this and other actions the Civil Guard size was increased and 3 independent companies had to be raised as a result. A presidential decree of March 28, 1928 established August 30 every year as Police Day. Its first observance was marked by a grand parade in Lima's outskirts by all the participating units. Law No.6183 enacted on April 23, 1928, formally declared the status of the police forces, the Civil Guard included, as
paramilitary units under the control and supervision of the Ministry of Government and Police with military traditions but with functions more akin to civil police services. On January 14, 1929, the Traffic Battalion was created, a merit of Act No. 6468, to control traffic in the Capital of Peru, with Major Edilberto Salazar Castillo as its first chief. The service was started in November of that year. Leguía reorganized the Corps of Security Forces of the Republic by virtue of Supreme Decree of March 17, 1930, with the autonomy of the role of cavalry in the Police Cavalry Squadron recognized and the Provincial Security and Lima Security Squadrons, thus by merger, became the First Cavalry Security Regt., moving the entire cavalry unit from the "Quinta de Presa" base to the Barracks "El Potao", approving Col. Rufino Manuel Martinez Martinez, CG's appointment as Head of the First Infantry Regiment of Security and appointing Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Pella Cáceda, CG, as First commander of the First Cavalry Regiment based at the Security Headquarters "El Potao." Subsequently, the First Security Infantry Regiment, consisting of battalions, was raised, which in turn merged with the Commissioners for Lima. Then, these units were spread throughout Peru, with the names of the
Security Battalions of the North, Central and South, with offices in Trujillo, Arequipa and La Oroya respectively. That same year, in 1930, the Machine Gun Battalion, mechanized that very same year, was forced to stand down. 1931 saw the Civil Guard involved in a rebellion by the 4th Army Division of the Peruvian Army led by LTCOL Agustín Cabrera in Cusco on the 26th of June. After forcing the surrender of the 4th Artillery Regiment the rebel division marched towards the CG station and the rebel leader asked the Civil Guard commander in the area, Major Humberto Flores Hidalgo to defect, but he refused, forcing the rebels to withdraw from the police station. Major Hidalgo alongside Captain Carlos Briolo forced Civil Guards units in the area to counterattack the rebel movement and worked with opponents of the movement to stop it in its tracks. The result was that most of the rebels defected and forced the capture of the rebel commander on July 6–7. The
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance's
rebellion of July 7, 1932 in
Trujillo, Peru surprised the services. As part of the forces responding to the revolution in that city, both the Civil Guard and the Security Corps excelled well and contributed to the victory at the cost of 36 dead and 15 wounded at the part of both services. This was the first time both services fought alongside the Peruvian Armed Forces in a joint service operation. In their honor and of all others who died while in service, a memorial cenotaph was opened in the Police and Civil Guard Academy courtyard in the following month. With the reform of the January 5th of 1944 the Civil Guards Corps and Security Corps were merged into one body called the Peruvian Civil Guard. Under a government mandate that the service responsible for providing services in the towns and cities of the nation, the corps was divided accordingly into the Urban Civil Guard for urban municipality and city security, and the Rural Civil Guard for rural security services. The Civil Guard was by then organized into 9 police regions, each responsible for the security of their respective regions. Two years later, the ISC was formally converted into the Corps Directorate of the ISC. Through a presidential decree of President Dr. José Luis Bustamante y Rivero on September 15, 1948, the Minister for Police Doctor Julio Cesar Villegas Cerro issued a resolution granting the autonomy and functional independence of the Investigations and Surveillance Corps (CIV) and establishing the Directorate for Investigations and Surveillance as the top command under the Ministry of Government and Police. In 1949, President of the Republic Army Divisional General Don Manuel Apolinario Odría Amoretti elevated the Directorate of Research and Monitoring to the category of a full general Directorate, by now an autonomous unit of the Civil Guard, with its own ranks and departments, with the creation of a fiscal investigations unit done in 1950. In the same year a full police mobile unit was formed in the Civil Guard as the motorized security force under LTCOL Isaac Ingunza Apolinario, CG. In the fall of 1956, Cadet 1st Class Teófilo Aliaga Salazar from the DC visited the Minister of Government and the Interior Dr. Jorge Fernández Stoll, about the unfair practices of the Police Academy towards its detective trainees. The fact, he stated to the Minister, was that cadet detectives were prohibited from advancing to higher ranks, only used by the Civil Guard officer cadets of the academy. By January of the next year, the situation for the detective cadets in the academy resulted in a reorganization of the Police Academy Corps of Cadets, with detective cadets now leading their own units while at the same time, plans were underway for the formation of the National Investigations Police Academy, with official sanction coming on the 20th of the same month. Another protest by the cadets, led by now Cadet Captain Salazar, that May, officially gave way to the NIPA's official opening on May 21, at the offices of the National Pedagogical Institute in Mexico Avenue, Victoria District, Lima, which would be its campus for the next 5 years. In 1977 the Civil Guard Instruction Centre welcomed its first ever woman cadets. The
revolutionary government of
Juan Velasco Alvarado reached levels of discontent among the general public in the mid-1970s that reached the police. Low salaries and a particular incident where a subordinate of the Civil Guard publicly was insulted and slapped by the Head of the Military House, General Enrique Ibáñez Burga, for failing to comply with his orders of not allowing journalists to approach the President's vehicle, led to protests and strikes in the Peruvian capital. The protests later spiraled out of control, resulting in the deployment of the
Peruvian Army and its violent suppression. These events became known as the
Limazo, and led to even more discontent, bringing about the downfall of Alvarado's government in a coup d'état in 1980 known as the
Tacnazo, organized by General
Francisco Morales Bermúdez.
Dissolution President
Alan García Pérez, in his first term as chief executive (1985–1990), began on September 14 of 1985, under the law 24,294 of the Republic, as approved by Congress, the beginning of the reorganization of the police services of the Republic of Peru. On February 4, 1986, continuing with the project undertaken, legislative decrees 370, 371, 372, and 373 relating to the Organic Law of the Ministry of the Interior, the Police Forces Code of 1969 and the Organic Laws of the Civil Guard, Investigations Police and the Republican Guard were issued to the three forces. Among these, Legislative Decree No. 371, the "1986 Police Forces Act", formally laid the foundations for the definitive establishment of the National Police of Peru. The Act established a single command (i.e. the Directorate General of Police) and also the formation of a single study center for the preparation of police officers (in the basis of Civil Guard Instruction Center "Mariano Santos" in La Campina – Chorrillos, and to be called the National Police Officer's School) and a national school for the guards and agents (referred to National Police headquarters at the former Republican Guard Superior Institute in Puente Piedra, today the National Police Technical College), directly under the Ministry of the Interior. Law 24,949 was finally enacted on December 6 of 1988 amending the relevant articles of the Political
Constitution of Peru of 1979 with the aim of the formal foundation of the National Police of Peru, and took effect the next day. The objectives sought were, among others, to integrate the three police forces to make better use of economic resources, eliminate the conflict that existed between them caused by "double role" problems and, above all, provide better services to society. With the unification of the police forces the CG became known as the "General Police" () until 1991, when all 3 commands of the National Police were abolished and a single command created in its place. ==Operational history==