Reies Tijerina - Trial and Incarceration

Trial and Incarceration

In early 1970, Tijerina was sentenced to prison for charges related to the 1967 Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid. The presiding judge, Garnett Burkes, denied defense claims of double jeopardy. A team of four lawyers spent eighteen months preparing the case, but on the opening day of the trial, Tijerina dismissed them, opting to defend himself. He was charged with the false imprisonment and assault of Daniel Rivera. Rivera, the prosecution's star witness, admitted under Tijerina's cross-examination that he neither knew federal civil rights laws, nor had he been trained in how to protect peoples' civil rights. He also testified that Tijerina was not to blame for the events at Tierra Amarilla. The Albuquerque Tribune compared Tijerina's courtroom performance with Clarence Darrow's. Dr. Frances Swadesh, a University of Colorado anthropologist, testified that Anglos had used force and legal maneuvers to steal the land. Tijerina based his closing argument on Article 6, Section two of the Constitution, which obligates the government to comply with the terms of international treaties, i.e., the protection of the property rights of land-grantees as provided by articles 8 and 9 of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He continued to assert his constitutional right to place a citizen's arrest on the law enforcement officers who, by their own admission, were ignorant of the law and had violated the Alianza's right of free assembly.

Tijerina was sentenced to two years in a federal prison. He was incarcerated in La Tuna, Texas, where he shared a cell with Joe Valachi. Suspecting a plot to poison him and blame the mafia, Tijerina refused to eat, preferring scraps saved by fellow Mexican prisoners.

At one point, he was transferred to Albuquerque, where he shared a cell with a 25 year-old Walter Payton, a member of the white militia, the Minutemen, who had been arrested by the FBI on weapons charges after five tons of weapons and ammunition were discovered near Truth or Consequences. When Payton learned that "King Tiger" was being held in the same facility, he told the authorities not to put them together, swearing he would kill Tijerina if he saw him. Prison officials promptly locked them in the same cell. But when the two talked peacefully for more than four hours, Payton was transferred out of the cell.

In 1970 Tijerina was transferred to a mental hospital in Springfield, Missouri. His exposure to the mentally ill combined with his historical research crystallized his concept of "Anglo psychopathy":

"I believe the origins of the Anglo psychopathy began when the English were excluded from the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed June 7, 1494, between Spain and Portugal. The treaty was brokered by the Pope. It was at this time that the Anglo not only rejected the legitimate body of the era, but also the religion that went against them. The Anglo, without respect for authority and religion, and to get back into the colonization game, legalized piracy. They had to operate outside the law to become the law. Over the last 480 years, the Anglo complex of psychopathy has worsened. His conscience tortures him, and his thinking grows demented for having violated his own religion, his own law, and humanity."

It was also in the mental hospital that Tijerina began focusing on a "solution for peace among humanity" and found a new goal: "to promote fraternity and harmony among human beings."

One of the terms of his 1971 release was that he not hold any leadership in the Alianza. Nonetheless, Tijerina continued to advocate for land rights, for human unity, and for an investigation into the death of Eulogio Salazar. The League of United Latin American Citizens lent their support to the land grant cause in 1972 after the publication of a supportive report in the Tribune. But in spite of the new invigoration of the movement, little progress was made outside of the sphere of public awareness.

On June 29, 1974, Tijerina began his second prison term. During his incarceration he came into contact with Blas Chávez, a World War II veteran who had been involved in New Mexico politics and ended up out of favor with the powerful. He told Tijerina of the corrupt dealings of Senator Joseph Montoya and other politicians, as well as the details behind the murder of Eulogio Salazar.