They Called Me King Tiger

Cultural Writing. Translated and edited by Jose Angel Gutierrez. All of the passion and commitment, as well as the flamboyant rhetoric of the 1960s, is preserved in this recollection of a life dedicated to a cause and transformed by continuous prosecution. Tijerina is the only member of a historical group of four Mexican-American Civil Rights activists to have penned his memoirs, perhaps in an effort to explain the trials and frustrations that brought him and his Federal Land-Grant Alliance members to break the law: reclaiming part of a national forest reserve as part of their inheritance; invading and occupying a courthouse, inflicting a gunshot wound on a deputy sheriff in the process; and challenging New Mexico and national authorities at every opportunity. But the acts that placed him in the most danger were also the ones that won the hearts and minds of many young Chicano activists.