This stereotype to a certain extent flourished on film because of sensationalistic journalist coverage of a nonfiction event: the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Newspapers documented the actions of Mexican revolutionaries on the battlefield, depicting bloodshed on the field between troops, translating real images of violence into fictional images of banditry, and in turn transforming the bandito into a criminal bent on violence. The stereotype of a bloodthirsty Mexican bandit became embedded in the public imagination. Mexicans were violent on the bat­ tlefield and off of it.