As Agent 15 of the judicial police made his way home for lunch, a tissue-paper balloon floated by in the Mexico City breeze. He rushed up to his “observatorio” on the rooftop of his apartment building, from where he spotted a girl, around fourteen years old, wearing a lilac-colored dress and holding a string. Certain the balloon had been released from the nearby roof where the girl stood, he ran down the stairs, and, while crossing the street, looked up to see yet another balloon.1 Since that morning in December 1926, so many balloons had been drifting through the sky that police struggled to find where they were coming from.2 When the balloons popped, leaflets tumbled down calling on Catholics to protest government anticlericalism by adorning their houses with yellow and white stripes in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe on her upcoming feast day.3 Searching the rooftop, Agent 15 found a stick with four strings, enough evidence to detain two men and the girl. Agent 15 was obeying orders sent by the Interior Ministry, the department of the federal executive branch that oversaw the enforcement of the nation’s laws. The ministry ordered Mexico City police agencies to “prevent the execution of the launch of six hundred balloons” that contained “anti-government propaganda.”4 Agent 15 and the rest of the police had become enforcers of the values and objectives set out by the revolutionary government.