E-mail a link to this story to a friend
Sunday, September 19, 1999
The 1900s have seen New Mexico grow from an out-of-the-way U.S. territory to a state known for science, sports, literature and the arts as well as for its unique cultural mix and brand of politics.
While many people have contributed in these areas, some have had a larger-than-usual impact.
Some are known far and wide: Smokey Bear, Georgia O'Keeffe, the Unser family. Others might not have as high a name recognition outside New Mexico, but leave a legacy that helped define the state.
And in most cases, their influence has been felt far beyond New Mexico's borders.
Here is one of the 20 individuals or families who helped make New Mexico what it is today.
Reies Lopez Tijerina -- 1926-
Anger over land distribution in northern New Mexico had been simmering for years. Hispanics believed that tens of thousands of acres of land that should have been theirs had been taken by the federal government and set aside for national forests.
 |
Reies Lopez Tijerina
|
It took Reies Lopez Tijerina, a former evangelical minister, to explode the issue onto the national agenda on June 5, 1967.
Tijerina and a group of New Mexicans left the village of Canjilon that day and drove to Tierra Amarilla, the Rio Arriba county seat, to arrest the district attorney, who they thought should enforce the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and restore property rights to the heirs of those who lived on Mexican territory at the end of the Mexican-American War.
The raid on the courthouse ended with a jailer and a state policeman shot and wounded, a reporter and a deputy sheriff taken hostage (they escaped), National Guardsmen swarming over northern New Mexico and the biggest manhunt the state had ever known.
Tijerina was captured and went to prison for his part in the raid. He lived for a while in the village of Coyote before moving to Mexico early in the 1990s.
Compiled by Fritz Thompson, Leslie Linthicum, Bill Hume and Dennis Latta
E-mail Story
Print Friendly