Reies Tijerina
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Reies López Tijerina (born September 21, 1926) has been a radical leader of the Chicano movement which fought for greater rights for Mexican-Americans. He was most active in the 1960s.
Tijerina was born on in Fall City, Texas. He moved frequently because his family was made up of sharecroppers. His mother died when he was six years old, and his family moved to Michigan for five years. At the age of 18, he enrolled in Assembly of God Bible Institute in Ysleta, Texas to study religion. In the late 1940s, he married Mary Escobar and lived as a traveling evangelical preacher. He stopped preaching in 1956 and helped found a commune in Arizona with 17 other families, which they called "The Valley of Peace". They were antagonized by their Caucasian neighbors, and the Arizona state government forced them to send their children to public school, which they did not wish to do, preferring to educate their own children.
While living in The Valley of Peace, Tijerina learned about land grants, a controversial issue regarding Hispanic rights. Tijerina spent a year in Mexico researching the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; he then wrote a booklet about the rights of Hispanic-Americans under the treaty. In February of 1963, he founded Alianza, an organization founded to "give the Indo-Hispanic people of the southwest pride in their heritage, and force the Anglo [non-Hispanic whites] to respect him, just like we respect them". On June 5, 1967, Tijerina led an armed raid on the Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, because the Rio Arriba District Attorney had prohibited Alianza from meeting. The raid brought national attention to the land-grant cause and also acted as a stimulus for the Chicano movement. In 1969, Tijerina was arrested because of his activities with Alianza; this caused a decline in his power as a leader. Alianza eventually broke up because of lack of leadership. Tijerina is still alive today, living in New Mexico.