Reies Tijerina

Reies López Tijerina (September 21, 1926 – January 19, 2015), was an activist who led a struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to restore New Mexican land grants to the descendants of their Spanish colonial and Mexican owners.

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.

As an activist, he worked in community education and organization, media relations, and land reclamations.

Born in Falls City, Texas in 1926, Tijerina spent several years as a pastor starting in 1950 and later as an itinerant preacher.

In the early 1950s, Tijerina was first encouraged to divert his religious energy into politics.

After a sermon in Dallas one day, a man invited him home for lunch.

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 subterranean shelters, covering them with automobile hoods recovered from garbage dumps outside the cities of Casa Grande and Eloy.

Tijerina obtained a permit from the Arizona Department of Education to construct a school and to educate their children.

He and the other men spent three months building the schoolhouse, only for it to be burned to the ground

The members of the colony made friends with the neighboring communities, especially African Americans and Native Americans, particularly the Pima Indians.

Tijerina soon found himself thrust into the role of bail bondsman for these minority communities.

Officials from the Pima County school board began visiting the Valley of Peace early in the year, encouraging the settlers to send their children to public schools.

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.

As a result, the commune-dwellers retained the right to educate their own children.

On April 18, 1956, Tijerina delivered his daughter Ira de Alá, the first person to be born in the colony.

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".

During the first year, a jet crashed on the property.

Valley of Peace residents reported the crash, and officials came to take away the remains but neglected to ask about the condition of the property or the residents.

Not long after the crash, a group of Anglo-American youths rode their horses over the tops of the settlers' subterranean homes, damaging them.

Thinking that the pranks were but youthful mischief, the commune members simply repaired their dwellings and made no complaint.

But shortly thereafter, they returned from work in the cotton fields to discover two residences destroyed by fire.

Tijerina and two other men went to file a report with Sheriff Lawrence White.

But when White found out the direction from which the horse tracks came, he refused to investigate.

Don Pelkam, an FBI agent stationed in Casa Grande who had investigated the crash, also refused to investigate, claiming that the arson had occurred outside his jurisdiction.

Shortly after his daughter was born, a storm flooded the Valley of Peace.

Devastated by his losses, Tijerina could not sleep.

During the night he had a vision:

"A man landed near my subterranean home. Behind him another man landed to his right ... Then a third ... landed nearby. The three sat over something that appeared to be a cloud. They spoke to me. They told me they came from far away, that they were coming for me, and they would take me to an old ancient regime.

My wife said, 'Why my husband?

Aren't there others?'

The three responded, 'There is no other in the world that can do this job.

We have searched the earth and only he can do this.'

At that moment, I interrupted and I asked, 'What job?'

They responded, 'Secretary.'"

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.

He became famous and infamous internationally for his 1967 armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse located on the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant whose lands, originally designated for Hispanic settlers, had largely been acquired by Anglo ranchers and land developers.