Foreshadowing La Alianza
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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. As Tijerina recalls, "He said to my face, 'I don't like preachers, they take advantage of the people. What I think you should do is quit talking religion. What the Spanish-American people need is a Spanish-American politician, you may be that … you should study law and history and help your people.'" In June 1956, Tijerina and a few bravos went to Monero, New Mexico, to visit a community that had previously welcomed him. There he learned about land grants, a controversial issue regarding Hispanic property rights. Zebedeo Martínez, Zebedeo Valdez, and other elderly men, all members of the Brotherhood of Jesus, shared the story of how their families were dispossessed of their lands. The next day, they took Tijerina's group to Chama, Tierra Amarilla, and Ensenada to meet with other happy heirs.
Tijerina empathized with their plight, and offered to do what he could to help them, on the condition that they unite to "re-gather the strength that the Anglos had taken from" them. But when he discovered that they held no titles to the land, having been turned over to Governor William Anderson Pile in the late nineteenth century, he resolved to go to Mexico to study the issue.
Read more about this topic: Reies Tijerina