Reies Tijerina
[1] As a vocal spokesman for the rights of Hispanos and Mexican Americans, he became a major figure of the early Chicano Movement (although he preferred "Indohispano" as a name for his people) and founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes.
Finding Texas land too expensive, they opted for 160 acres (647,497 square meters) in the Southern Arizona desert, which they bought with $1,400 in pooled funds.
Situated just north of the Papago Tohono O'odham Indian reservation, the land was secluded and undeveloped, the perfect conditions for a community seeking to remove itself from the "vanity and corruption" of the cities.
At first, the families, referred to as "los Bravos" or the "Heralds of Peace", lived under trees, but they soon dug themselves subterranean shelters, covering them with automobile hoods recovered from garbage dumps outside the cities of Casa Grande and Eloy.
Citing the recent rape and murder of a local eight-year-old girl who was waiting for the bus, Tijerina and the other parents requested police protection for their children, which was denied.
He chose the name Ira de Alá, literally "Wrath of Allah", because he "knew that if there was a just God, he had to be angry and unhappy with those that managed our government and religion here on Earth".
Not long after the crash, a group of Anglo-American youths rode their horses over the tops of the settlers' subterranean homes,[citation needed] damaging them.
"[2]Following the vision, Tijerina felt that his life had purpose and direction, and his experience, which he interpreted as divine, gave him an unwavering conviction.
But when he discovered that they held no titles to the land, having been turned over to Governor William Anderson Pile in the late nineteenth century, he resolved to go to Mexico to study the issue.
He left in the fall of 1956 [citation needed]and stayed in Mexico until the new year, researching at the General National Archive and meeting with lawyers and other influential people.
Another was a re-drafted version of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo containing a protocol that guaranteed land grants to descendants of the original grantees, which he obtained in the Tepito barrio for twenty-five cents.
On this trip to Mexico, Tijerina realized that the biggest obstacle to his success was "the fear the Anglo had placed in [the land grant-heirs'] hearts through their foreign education."
In January 1957, officials from the Arizona State Department of Education threatened Tijerina and the other parents with jail time if they did not send their children to public school.
Tijerina claims to have later found out that the real reason for the harassment was "Rockefeller money was planning to build a model city about a mile from the Valley of Peace."
Tijerina secured housing in Ensenada, New Mexico, where he came into further contact with members of the Brotherhood of Jesus, who told him of Thomas B. Catron's leadership of the Santa Fe Ring, a group of ranchers, and government officials who systematically dispossessed the land grantees and their heirs of their claims from 1848 until 1904.
Arriving in Mexico City, Tijerina made the acquaintance of the labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano, who listened patiently to the story of the struggle of "the forgotten community" over the land, and offered to do what he could for the price of $25,000.
It was also at this time that the local press gave Tijerina the nickname of Don Quixote, belittling his quest to restore the property rights of land grant heirs.
The insult crushed the hopes of many Alianzistas that Mexico would bring their case to the United Nations, and led Tijerina to suspect that the FBI was behind the deportation.
On June 5, 1967, Tijerina led an armed raid on the Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico,[3] to free the imprisoned members and to place a citizen's arrest on Sánchez for violating the Alianza's right of peaceable assembly in Coyote two days prior.
[citation needed] Unbeknownst to Tijerina, the county judge had already freed the imprisoned members while Sánchez himself was not present at the courthouse that day.
In the ensuing confrontation, Eulogio Salazar, a prison guard, was shot and Daniel Rivera, a sheriff's deputy, was badly injured.
Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico E. Lee Francis ordered the National Guard out as well as a large array of law enforcement agencies, including state police from all the northern counties, local sheriffs and unofficial posses, Jicarilla Apache police, and cattle inspectors, to arrest all members of the Alianza involved in the incident, thus launching the biggest manhunt in New Mexico history.
[5] The Ballad of Río Arriba, a corrido based on the raid written by Roberto Martínez, received heavy radio play.
The next Monday, Tijerina surrendered to authorities in Albuquerque and was charged with fifty-four criminal counts including kidnapping and armed assault.
The courthouse raid caught the attention of the national press and brought Tijerina's regional land grant crusade into the larger Chicano and civil rights movements.
Tijerina insisted that the Native American delegations spearhead the march and be the first to demand justice, a proposal that had been approved during the original planning meeting with Dr. King.
On June 23, 1969, the day that Warren E. Burger was sworn in as Chief Justice, Tijerina returned to Washington to place him under citizen's arrest.
A team of four lawyers spent eighteen months preparing the case, but on the opening day of the trial, Tijerina dismissed them, opting to defend himself.
Suspecting a plot to poison him and blame the mafia, Tijerina refused to eat, preferring scraps saved by fellow Mexican prisoners.
During his incarceration he came into contact with Blas Chávez, a World War II veteran who had been involved in New Mexico politics and ended up out of favor with the powerful.
