Tierra Amarilla Land Grant & Courthouse Raid

During the early nineteenth century, the governments of Spain and Mexico designated more than 594,000 acres of territory in what is today northern New Mexico and southern Colorado as community land in hopes of luring settlers to the area. Most of the land was included in a transaction known as the 1832 Tierra Amarilla land grant. When the United States acquired Mexico’s Southwestern territories after the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the rights of the Mexican landowners were protected by treaty.

However, in the late nineteenth century, a White developer began to purchase the land from the family of one of the original owners of the grant. Over time, the land titles were recorded in his name, and the land was passed down to his family. The original residents of the area protested, claiming the land was community land and could not be sold off. The dispute simmered for almost a century until 1967 when a group of land-rights activists raided the Río Arriba County Courthouse in New Mexico. The activists wanted to arrest the county’s district attorney and free members of their group to bring attention to the land-rights battle. The standoff ended with two police officers wounded and several group members arrested after a statewide manhunt.

Background

Spanish explorers first arrived in the region of the American Southwest about 1540 in their search for rumored cities of gold. The Spanish established their first permanent settlements in what would become New Mexico in 1598. During the seventeenth century, Spain controlled an empire that stretched from modern-day Chile in South America throughout all of Central America and into the southern and western regions of the United States.

However, Spain’s power in Europe began to fade in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, leading Mexican leaders to begin a war for independence in 1810. The fighting lasted until August 24, 1821, when Mexico won its independence from Spain. Mexico now controlled all Spanish lands in Central America and the southwestern regions of North America.

In the early nineteenth century, the United States was undergoing a period of expansion and began to claim land farther west. By the 1830s and 1840s, Americans had developed the idea that it was their “manifest destiny” to continue that expansion all the way to the West Coast. To do this, the United States provoked Mexico into a war in 1846 that ended two years later with an American victory. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States received all Mexican land in what is today Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

Overview

In 1814, Spain began granting land to settlers in the region of northern New Mexico. The practice was maintained by the government of Mexico after independence. In 1832, Mexico made the largest of such grants, 524,000 acres known as the Tierra Amarilla land grant, to Manuel Martinez. Combined with previous land grants, the Tierra Amarilla grants consisted of 594,515 acres in modern-day Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, and Archuleta County, Colorado. The land was set aside as community land to attract ranchers to the area. Designating it as community land meant that the land could not be sold and that all pastureland, watering holes, and roads could be used by anyone. When the lands changed hands from Mexico to the United States in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stated that the rights of all Mexican landowners, including those of the Tierra Amarilla landowners, would be “inviolably respected.”

Manuel Martinez had died in 1844, leaving his land rights to his son Francisco Martinez. In 1856, Francisco Martinez petitioned the surveyor general of New Mexico for private ownership of the Tierra Amarilla land grant, claiming the Mexican government gave the land to his father. In 1860, the US Congress officially granted the land to Francisco Martinez who issued deeds of ownership to the 132 families living on the land in seven communities. The deeds continued the practice of allowing free use of the land.

After Francisco Martinez died in 1874, a White attorney named Thomas Catron approached his heirs and began buying parcels of their land. Catron convinced New Mexico’s surveyor general that the land was owned by Martinez, and his heirs had the right to sell it as they pleased. Catron received full ownership of the land in 1883. It was passed down to his heirs after his death and eventually sold to a land company, divided, and sold to separate individuals and companies.

The issue remained a source of contention for residents of the area into the mid-twentieth century. In 1963, activist Reies López Tijerina formed La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (The Federal Alliance of Land Grants) to enforce the land-grant rights included in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and fight to return the land that he felt was stolen from its rightful owners. The group had swelled to more than twenty thousand members by 1967. Tijerina and La Alianza organized numerous protests, sit-ins, and the occupation of an amphitheater owned by the US Forestry Service.

In early June of that year, several members of La Alianza were arrested while taking part in a protest. On June 5, Tijerina and a group of activists raided the courthouse looking to free their fellow activists and make a citizens’ arrest of Río Arriba County District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez. When they discovered that neither the prisoners nor Sanchez were there, the raid turned into a standoff and a shootout that left two police officers wounded.

After kidnapping a sheriff’s deputy and court reporter, Tijerina and his followers fled into the woods, sparking a manhunt that remains the largest in the state’s history. One of the hostages escaped and Tijerina released the other before he was captured six days after the standoff. Tijerina accepted a plea deal and was sent to jail for two years for destruction of federal property and assault.

The incident brought national attention to Tijerina and the issue of Tierra Amarilla land rights. The US government initiated several reviews of the issue, including one in 2004 conducted by the General Accounting Office of the US Congress. The report found that the legal procedures of the time, flawed though they may have been, were followed, and the transfer of the land to Francisco Martinez and later sale to Thomas Catron was legal.

Bibliography

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Moya, Jesse, and Cody Hooks. “Chicanos, Aztlán and the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid.” Taos News, 8 June 2017, www.taosnews.com/news/local-news/chicanos-aztl-n-and-the-tierra-amarilla-courthouse-raid/article‗03cb6d2f-ef56-538a-aba8-30b3b046477f.html. Accessed 12 June 2023.

“New Mexico AG Seeks to Void Hispanic Land Grant Transfer to Greeley Nonprofit.” CPR News, 19 July 2018, www.cpr.org/2018/07/19/new-mexico-ag-seeks-to-void-hispanic-land-grant-transfer-to-greeley-nonprofit/. Accessed 12 June 2023.

“1967: Tierra Amarilla Land Grant & Courthouse Raid.” Library of Congress, guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/tierra-amarilla-courthouse-raid. Accessed 12 June 2023.

Prieskop, Victoria. “Fresh Dispute Over Historic New Mexico Land Grant.” Courthouse News Service, 20 July 2018, www.courthousenews.com/fresh-dispute-over-historic-new-mexico-land-grant/. Accessed 12 June 2023.

“Remembering the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid 50 Years Later: June 5, 1967.” KSFR.org, 5 June 2017, www.ksfr.org/news/2017-06-05/remembering-the-tierra-amarilla-courthouse-raid-50-years-later-june-5-1967. Accessed 12 June 2023.

“Tierra Amarilla Land Grant.” New Mexico Legislature, 13 Sept. 2018, indiancountrytoday.com/archive/10-things-you-should-know-about-alaska-natives. Accessed 12 June 2023.