Federales is a short term for the Mexican Federal Police or any of its predecessors, including the Federal Investigations Agency

Federal Investigations Agency

The Federal Investigations Agency was a Mexican federal agency that existed to fight corruption and organized crime, through an executive order by President Vicente Fox Quesada. The AFI replaced an earlier agency, the Federal Judicial Police...

 (AFI) or the Federal Preventive Police. The term gained widespread usage by English-speakers due to popularization in such films as The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah about an aging outlaw gang on the Texas-Mexico border, trying to exist in the changing "modern" world of 1913...

, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (film)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1948 American film written and directed by John Huston, a feature film adaptation of B. Traven's 1927 novel of the same name, in which two Americans Fred C. Dobbs and Bob Curtin during the 1920s in Mexico join with an old-timer, Howard , to prospect for gold...

, Blue Streak

Blue Streak (film)

Blue Streak is a 1999 American action comedy film directed by Les Mayfield and starring Martin Lawrence. The film is a remake of the 1965 British film The Big Job, although the original film is uncredited...

, and Machete

Machete (film)

Machete is a 2010 action film directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis. The "Machete" character originates from the 2001 Spy Kids film, written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. This film is an expansion of a fake trailer that was released together with Rodriguez's and Quentin Tarantino's...

. The singular "Federale" is in fact incorrect, since the Spanish language uses "es" to pluralize nouns ending in a consonant; therefore, the correct singular form is "Federal". The term is a cognate and counterpart to the slang "Feds" in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Historically, Federales was also the common term used for the Mexican regular or Federal Army

Mexican Army

The Mexican Army is the combined land and air branch and largest of the Mexican Military services; it also is known as the National Defense Army. It is famous for having been the first army to adopt and use an automatic rifle, , in 1899, and the first to issue automatic weapons as standard issue...

, especially during the 34 year rule of Porfirio Díaz

Porfirio Díaz

José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...

 until 1911. Following Díaz's overthrow by rebel forces led by Francisco Madero, the Federal Army remained in existence. The Federales were eventually disbanded in July and August 1914 when Madero's successor Victoriano Huerta

Victoriano Huerta

José Victoriano Huerta Márquez was a Mexican military officer and president of Mexico. Huerta's supporters were known as Huertistas during the Mexican Revolution...

was in turn defeated by an alliance of revolutionary forces.