Zorro —Diego de la Vega behind the mask— fights, in colonial California, the corrupt governors and soldiers who exploit and terrorize the people. And he does so outside the law: he is an outlaw wanted by the authorities. But those authorities are precisely the oppressors, and the law that pursues him is the one that shields their abuses. Zorro does not offend against justice; he offends against a legality that has become the instrument of tyrants. For radical criminology, he embodies one of its sharpest ideas: that sometimes illegality is more just than legality.
// The theoryWhen the law protects the oppressor
The radical criminology of Taylor, Walton and Young denaturalizes the equation "legal = just, illegal = unjust." It holds that the law is an instrument of power, and that when power is oppressive, the law protects oppression: it legalizes plunder, criminalizes resistance, defines as "order" what is really domination. Zorro lives in that inverted world —where the corrupt governor is "the law" and the one who defends the people is "the criminal"—, and his mask is the logical response: to do justice you must place yourself outside a legality captured by the unjust. The theory generalizes the intuition: under an order unjust enough, obeying the law can be the immoral act and breaking it, the upright one. Zorro is not a criminal who disguises himself as a hero; he is a hero whom an unjust order turns into a criminal.
Legitimacy against legality
Zorro dramatizes the crucial distinction between legality (what the law permits) and legitimacy (what is just). We normally expect them to coincide; radical criminology points out that, under unjust power, they come apart —and that when they do, legality loses its moral authority—. Zorro's governor has all the legality on his side and no legitimacy; Zorro, no legality and all the legitimacy. This distinction is the basis of concepts such as civil disobedience or the right to resist tyranny, recognized even by the liberal tradition. Radical theory carries it into the terrain of common crime: if the law can be illegitimate, then the label of "criminal" does not guarantee that whoever bears it is unjust —it may be exactly the opposite—. Zorro trains us to ask, when faced with any "criminal," not only whether they broke the law, but whether the law they broke deserved to be obeyed.
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// The subjectThe privileged man's mask
There is an uncomfortable nuance in Zorro that the theory must not hide: Diego de la Vega is a nobleman, a privileged figure who can afford to play the rebel because his position protects him. Unlike Ned Kelly, pushed into crime by his misery, Zorro chooses rebellion from a secure position. This complicates the romantic reading: radical criminology, in its honest version, would recognize that the aristocratic vigilante who descends to save the people is also a consoling fantasy —the fantasy that liberation will come from a noble savior and not from the organization of the oppressed themselves—. Zorro is a powerful symbol of resistance to unjust law; but his aristocratic mask reminds us that not all rebellion is born in the same place, and that the rebellion of the privileged and that of the desperate are not interchangeable.
El Zorro
// The crackNeither "all illegality is just" nor "the law is always right"
The crack with Zorro is the dangerous leap from "this law is unjust" to "all illegality is just." Radical criminology, misused, authorizes anyone to declare themselves a Zorro and call their crime "resistance." But the fact that some laws are illegitimate does not mean that breaking them is always just: it requires that the order really be oppressive and that the act really combat that oppression, not that the alibi of injustice disguise self-interest. Zorro fights tyrants; the swindler who calls himself a "rebel" robs his neighbors. The opposite crack is blind legalism: "the law is the law, Zorro is a criminal and that's that." That turns obedience into an absolute value and leaves one defenseless before tyranny —the very logic by which every unjust regime has criminalized those who resisted it—. The theory demands the hard judgment: distinguishing legitimate resistance from the alibi, case by case.
That Zorro needs a mask —hiding his identity in order to do justice— is the very image of a sick order: when doing what is right requires hiding from the law, the problem lies not in the one who hides, but in the law he must hide from.
Asking whether the law deserves to be obeyed
Zorro matters because he keeps alive a question that comfortable societies prefer to forget: does every law deserve to be obeyed?. History is full of legal and monstrous laws —slavery, apartheid, racial laws— whose transgression was, in retrospect, the most just thing. Radical criminology, with figures like Zorro, trains us not to automatically confuse legality with justice, and to examine whom each law really serves before venerating it. Not to justify any crime, but to preserve the critical capacity to recognize when "the criminal" is really the just one and "the law," the crime. In a world where power always has the law on its side, that capacity to distinguish legality from legitimacy is one of the most important defenses of freedom.
Three key takeaways
- Zorro embodies radical criminology's sharpest thesis: he acts outside the law because the law itself serves the oppressors. His illegality is more just than the legality he fights.
- He dramatizes the distinction between legality (what the law permits) and legitimacy (what is just): under unjust power they come apart, and legality loses its moral authority. The "criminal" label does not guarantee injustice.
- Neither "all illegality is just" (it requires the order to be genuinely oppressive, not an alibi for self-interest) nor "the law is always right" (which leaves one defenseless before tyranny). His aristocratic mask reminds us that not all rebellion is born in the same place.
Sources · further reading
- Taylor, I., Walton, P. & Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology. Routledge.
- Thoreau, H. D. (1849). Desobediencia civil.
- Chambliss, W. J. (1975). «Toward a Political Economy of Crime». Theory and Society, 2.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es El Zorro?
El Zorro («Diego de la Vega») es un villano de La máscara del Zorro, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. The law protects the tyrants who oppress the people.
¿Por qué El Zorro (Diego de la Vega) se convierte en villano?
Zorro and radical criminology: the vigilante who acts outside the law because the law itself serves the oppressors. When illegality is more just than legality.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a El Zorro?
El caso de El Zorro se analiza desde la Criminología Radical / Nueva Criminología. Radical criminology (Taylor, Walton and Young) holds that the law can be an instrument of oppression. Zorro dramatizes it: a masked vigilante who acts outside the law because the law itself serves the oppressors. His illegality is more just than the legality he fights —the case where breaking the law against an unjust order is the most upright act possible—.
