The Mexican

A fugitive from the law, Tijerina lived undercover in New Mexico for the next five years while his wife supported him and their six children. This time period amounted to a five-year sabbatical that gave him the time to understand American expansion as a bitter conquest that had robbed the region’s Spanish-speakers of their lands after the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848 by violating the peace treaty that ended the war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He reached this conclusion after conducting additional research in Mexico and learning from nuevomexicanos, Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, whose families had experienced widespread land dispossession. In 1963, as the statute of limitations for his arrest drew near, Tijerina publicly founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants,) whose purpose was to resurrect the 1848 treaty.