La Quinta Parte

Not all movements were as successful as educational reform however. The quest to regain ancestral lands, for example, was a laborious, fruitless struggle. The organization behind this goal was called La Alianza, and was led by Reies López Tijerina. Tijerina’s main goal was to restore New Mexican land grants back to the descendents of the original Mexican and Spanish owners. Though belittled by the media, La Alianza began to take off, with membership enrollment in the 2000s in just a few years. La Alianza appealed directly to the New Mexican government to take action, and when it did not, La Alianza moved into action itself. Its members took a section of Carson National Forest, part of which had been part of a New Mexican land grant, as their own, and claimed it to be the "Republic of San Joaquín del Río de Chama. The activists were soon arrested, but most made bail. After a demonstration to protest the previous arrests, many members were arrested again, but Tijerina evaded arrest, and instead planned a courthouse raid to release his fellow Alianza members, for which he was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for. One of the clauses of his release was that he was to not hold any leadership position in La Alianza, and because of this, the movement generally lost its momentum and was forgotten by the public.