Reies Lopez Tijerina, NM Chicano movement figure, passes away at 88
*This is significant, that Reies Lopez Tijerina has passed. It’s also sadly significant that many young Chicanos don’t know who he was. Let’s change that. VL
By Ramón Rentería, El Paso Times
Reies López Tijerina, the controversial land-grant activist whose armed raid of the Rio Arriba County, N.M., courthouse in rural northern New Mexico in 1967 made him a national figure, died Monday in El Paso. He was 88.
Tijerina had been in failing health in recent years. He died of natural causes at 1 p.m. Monday at an El Paso hospital, according to family spokeswoman Estela Reyes.
“My life has taken many surprising turns,” Tijerina said in a July 14, 2009, interview with the El Paso Times.
Tijerina, a former evangelist and fiery orator with roots in South Texas, has often been described as one of the major warriors of the Chicano movement that advocated for civil rights for Mexican-Americans across the Southwest in the 1960s and 1970s. He relished the attention but preferred to be called an “Indo-Hispano,” a term he said more accurately reflected his ethnic and cultural heritage.
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[Photo courtesy of Dos Centavos]