1960
Byrna Productions releases Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, the story of a slave who leads a violent revolt in ancient Rome. The film promotes the ideals of freedom and human dignity.

1962
Disney edits footage from its Elfego Baca television series (starring Robert Loggia and featuring a teenage Annette Funicello) into Elfego Baca: Six Gun Law (Walt Disney Pictures, dir. Christian Nyby). It is based on the larger-than-life New Mexico lawman, Elfego Baca.

1965
Murieta (produced by Pro Artis Iberica and distributed by Warner Brothers, dir. George Sherman) retells the legend of Joaquín Murrieta. Jeffery Hunter and Arthur Kennedy star.

1969
20th Century Fox releases Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (dir. George Roy Hill). Reviews are lukewarm, but audiences flock to see the power team of Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the beloved bandits who flee the United States for Bolivia, where they once again turn to crime.

Eric Hobsbawm’s first edition of Bandits is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson of London, England. The book, which sparks a healthy debate, defines the "social bandit" as a peasant outlaw who is seen as a champion of his or her socioeconomic group.

1972
Social anthropologist and historian Anton Blok writes an influential critique of Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, disputing Hobsbawm’s "social bandit" theory.