Reies Lopez Tijerina dies at 88; Chicano rights movement leader

On June 5, 1967, a group of armed men, led by fiery preacher Reies Lopez Tijerina, arrived at the county courthouse in the small New Mexico community of Tierra Amarilla. They were there to free prisoners who were arrested in a land grant dispute and to place the district attorney under citizen's arrest. The raid was almost entirely botched. The prisoners and district attorney weren't there, but a gun battle broke out in which a state policeman and jailer were wounded. A judge escaped harm by using a ladder to climb into an attic and pulling up the ladder behind him. The raiders fled, kidnapping a reporter who later got away and another man whom they let go. The incident, as bungled as it was, vaulted Tijerina — captured six days after the raid — into the national spotlight, where he was eventually seen as one of the Four Horsemen of the Chicano rights movement, along with Cesar Chavez,, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales and Jose Angel Gutierrez. His leadership role was relatively brief, but the influence of the raid lives on. "It's the moment that the Chicano movement became an important part of the civil rights movement," said David Correia, a professor at the University of New Mexico. Tijerina, 88, died Monday in an El Paso hospital. He died of natural causes after battling diabetes and heart conditions for several years, said Estela Reyes-Lopez, a family friend. He remained a divisive figure to the end — to some a hero and to others a reckless egoist. The land grant issue was of particular importance to Latinos who felt vast sections of the area had been taken from their ancestors. The land had been granted to farmers, ranchers and other settlers during the time that Spain and then Mexico ruled the territory that is now the states of New Mexico, Arizona and part of California. Land grants were given to farmers, ranchers and other settlers "to be a kind of buffer against Indian tribes," said Correia, author of the book "Properties of Violence" about the land grant movement. The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican-American War ceded the land to the victorious United States. The treaty originally upheld land grants, but that section was stricken by the U.S. Senate...more