Kosterlitzky: The Mailed Fist of Mexico

Perhaps nowhere in the annals of the wild border countey was there a more improbable character than Emilio Kosterlitzky. The son of a Russian colonel, Kosterlitzky  himself was a Russian naval cadet. He jumped ship in South America and worked his way north, joining the Mexican army in 1872 where he quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming colonel of the border Rurales. The Rurales were a band of rogues recruited from Mexican jails and led by the cream of the Mexican army. It took