Hidden Chicano Cinema: Film Dramas in the Borderlands

The King Tiger Awakens the Sleeping Giant of the Southwest

146 land loss has historically been the latent grievance of the nuevomexicano . Therefore it comes as no surprise that the Chicano movement of the s, a broad-based social movement aimed at redressing the exclusion of Mexican Americans from educational and employment benefits—and a myriad other social concerns—would become closely identified with Reies López Tijerina’s struggle to regain lands that had once belonged to New Mexican Spanish-speaking communities. Tijerina’s land grant movement and the issues it raised would in time spawn the most radical reconsideration of the Chicano experience in the Borderlands since the U.S. takeover in . Its impact would be felt in a number of social and educational quarters and its effects would extend far beyond the dramatic period of direct action and confrontation (–) that put Tijerina and his movement in the national spotlight. Well before Tijerina came to prominence, and before the American public ever saw Tijerina’s face on television or in movie newsreels, the voice, if not the face of the “King Tiger,” as the Saturday Evening Post dubbed him, was familiar to most nuevomexicanos. In the years prior to his famous Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid in June , Tijerina, the fiery 6 the king tiger Awakens the sleeping Giant of the southwest Geographically, south America is as big as China and the united states put together. that’s why they call it the sleeping giant. even though it is great, it is made up of a new breed of people from the mixing of indian and spanish blood according to law 2, title 1, Book 6 of the laws of the indies which have been frozen and hidden. —reies lópez tijerina, 1969 tHe kinG tiGer AwAkens tHe sleePinG GiAnt 147 and outspoken leader of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Alliance of Land Grants), had managed to organize nuevomexicano land grant heirs and other allies without ever coming to the attention of the Anglodominated political and governmental institutions in New Mexico. It was only when Tijerina’s movement threatened to upset the social and political status quo that governed interethnic relations in much of the Southwest that public concern came to focus on him. After Tijerina, the safe and commonplace notions of multiculturalism and regional interethnic harmony in the Borderlands were shattered as the hidden transcript of a history of conflict in the region emerged with new force. Knowledge of the land grants as a public policy question accelerated dramatically when Tijerina took to the airways on April , , and began to broadcast “La Voz de la Justicia” (The voice of justice), a program that aired daily on KABQ, Albuquerque’s premier Spanish-language radio station at the time. In his autobiography, Tijerina describes the importance of this program to his movement: “It was a station of , watts. Every morning at  am I would speak to our community. This was the best media to reach the community about the issue of land. Soon word began to spread about the radio program. Hundreds upon hundreds of heirs who had not heard of the Alianza began calling and writing to join the Alianza. This daily radio program resulted in the greatest weapon that I had ever used. Our community had never before felt that power in New Mexico” (, –). Tijerina typically began his daily broadcasts with a scathing indictment of Anglo-dominated public institutions in the state of New Mexico. He would then proceed to enumerate Chicano land claims, using the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and other historical documentation as the basis of his invectives. In this sense, Tijerina was prophetic.1 An important feature of Tijerina’s broadcasts was the open-line portion of the program where listeners could call in and voice their viewpoint on the issues the program raised. While some listeners attacked Tijerina, labeling him a charlatan or slandering him as a communist or accusing him of duping his followers for his own gain and advancement, others understood that just indignation fueled his angry diatribes. Despite detractors, Tijerina’s movement had strong appeal among vast numbers of everyday New Mexicans. In the beginning, Alianza membership consisted mainly of the older residents from rural communities 148 HiDDen CHiCAno CineMA in northern New Mexico, those that knew the history of the land grab or had been told the story by elders who had lived that history, people who were sometimes referred to by the moniker “manitos.” It...