Land, Legitimacy and the Rise of Reies Lopez Tijerina Brainpower & Brownbags lecture series

Historian Jacobo Baca speaks on "Land, Legitimacy, and the Rise of Reies Lopez Tijerina" on Tuesday, Feb. 22, in the John Gaw Meem Room, 105 Washington Ave. (Enter via the museum's Washington entrance.) This Brainpower & Brownbags lecture is free and open to the public. 

Baca grew up in Penasco, where decades-old land dis­putes are still a topic of conversation — including Tijerina's La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, the land-grant organization he founded in 1963, and the 1967 raid on the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse.

Conflicts over land ownership in New Mexico began with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and are still not fully settled. Federal courts continue to hear claims brought by the Hispanic descendants of the original land grantees. The peoples of New Mexico—Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos—remain in perpetual negotiations over land and water rights.

Baca’s dis­ser­ta­tion for the University of New Mexico is Somos Indi­gena: Eth­nic Pol­i­tics and Land Tenure in Mod­ern New Mex­ico, 1904–2004.  It explores eth­nic pol­i­tics in mod­ern land tenure, the effect of these pol­i­tics on Pueblo-Hispano rela­tions, and the role of the state in the com­plex rela­tion­ship that these com­mu­ni­ties that have neigh­bored one another for over two and a half cen­turies share.