The King of Kings

Abstract

Born in 1926 outside of San Antonio, Texas, to a migrant farmworker family, Reies López Tijerina’s earliest years were defined by severe poverty and intense religiosity. Nevertheless, starting as a boy, Tijerina saw himself as destined by God for greatness. After attending a Pentecostal Bible college, he spent five years as an Assembly of God minister before becoming an itinerant preacher. As a preacher, he crisscrossed the United States, including several trips through northern New Mexico, which introduced him to the sordid history of land dispossession in the region. His marriage to a fellow Bible school student, Mary Escobar, produced an ever-growing family that joined him in his constant travels and life of precarity. In 1954, a collection of his sermons condemned the United States and its citizens for licentiousness and greed.