They Called Me King Tiger: My Struggle for the Land and Our Rights (Hispanic Civil Rights (Paperback))

Cultural Writing. Translated and edited by Jose Angel Gutierrez. All of the passion and commitment, as well as the flamboyant rhetoric of the 1960s, is preserved in this recollection of a life dedicated to a cause and transformed by continuous prosecution. Tijerina is the only member of a historical group of four Mexican-American Civil Rights activists to have penned his memoirs, perhaps in an effort to explain the trials and frustrations that brought him and his Federal Land-Grant Alliance members to break the law: reclaiming part of a national forest reserve as part of their inheritance; invading and occupying a courthouse, inflicting a gunshot wound on a deputy sheriff in the process; and challenging New Mexico and national authorities at every opportunity. But the acts that placed him in the most danger were also the ones that won the hearts and minds of many young Chicano activists.

A onetime minister and traveling revivalist, Reies López Tijerina becam involved in disputes over historical land grants and in 1963 founded militant Alianza Federal de las Mercedes (The Federal Land-Grant Alliance). In 1966, he and his followers briefly seized part of the Kit Carson National Forest. Subsequent incidents escalated into violence (including an armed raid by the Alianza in June 1967 on a New Mexico county courthouse), and Tijerina ultimately served prison time for state and federal offenses.