Epilogue

As leader of the Alianza de Mercedes Federales, Reies López Tijerina failed to recover even one acre of contested land on behalf of his land-poor Spanish-speaking membership. However, his ideas regarding the nature of American continental expansion remain influential in 2020. After his release from federal prison in 1971, where he spent time in the psychiatric ward suspected of displaying a “personality disorder of the schizoid type,” Tijerina entered a slow slide into near obscurity. New interests, including numerology and genealogy, competed with his land-grant commitments. Certain that a vast Jewish conspiracy threatened global security, Tijerina also displayed a virulent anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, his ideas regarding conquest, indigeneity, land theft, culture, and history infused the Chicano movement and later entered mainstream historical works. He died in 2015.