Reies Lopez Tijerina
Reies Lopez Tijerina (September 21, 1926 – January 19, 2015) led a struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to restore New Mexican land grants to the descendants of their Spanish colonial and Mexican owners.2 As a vocal spokesman for the rights of Hispanics and Mexican Americans, he became a major figure of the early Chicano Movement (although he preferred "Indohispano" as a name for his people). As an activist, he worked in community education and organization, media relations, and land reclamations. He became famous and infamous internationally for his 1967 armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse. He was born in Falls City, Texas.
After several years as a pastor starting in 1950 and later as an itinerant preacher, in 1956 Tijerina and 17 families of his followers sought to purchase land in Texas on which to create their version of the Kingdom of God. 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. They especially sought to protect their children from the influence of public schooling.
At first, the families, referred to as "los Bravos" or the "Heralds of Peace", lived under trees, but they soon dug themselves shelters, covering them with automobile hoods recovered from garbage dumps outside the cities of Casa Grande and Eloy.
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