Shaking Rio Arriba Down: The Courthouse Raid

Nearly sixty years ago, a small group of activists led by Reies López Tijerina stormed the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, an event that would come to symbolize deep divisions in the American Southwest. In Shaking Rio Arriba Down: The Courthouse Raid, veteran journalist Larry Joseph Calloway revisits the dramatic 1967 uprising and its enduring impact on politics, culture, and identity in the region. Through a reporter’s eye and historian’s depth, Calloway traces how a movement born of centuries-old land disputes and cultural marginalization escalated into confrontation. Drawing from firsthand experience and meticulous research, he offers an unflinching account of the men and women who sought justice through rebellion, and of a state caught between its past and its future. Part history, part memoir, this book sheds light on how the fight for recognition among Hispanic communities in northern New Mexico foreshadowed broader debates on ethnicity, language, and belonging that continue today. Shaking Rio Arriba Down is both a personal reflection and a compelling reminder that the stories of the Southwest are inseparable from the larger story of America itself.