Chasing Tijerina They Called Me King Tiger

standoff at the Río Arriba County courthouse played out like the climax of a Western movie. On June 5, 1967, after leaving two officials wounded in the village of Tierra Amarilla, members of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes sped into the mountains in a stolen GTO. They had two hostages in tow — a reporter and the sheriff’s deputy who owned the GTO — and thus was launched the largest manhunt in New Mexico history. Their charismatic leader was captured at a gas station in Bernalillo six days later and charged with 54 criminal counts, including kidnapping and armed assault.

The shadow of Reies López Tijerina (1926-2015), who spearheaded the 1967 raid to free associates of the Alianza Federal, looms large in New Mexico history. In the 1960s, his leadership of the Alianza, an organization he founded to reclaim centuries-old Spanish land grants in New Mexico, brought him shoulder-to-shoulder with national civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. And his arrest after the battle at the courthouse secured his status as a Chicano folk hero, even inspiring the song “Corrido de Río Arriba.” The corrido got heavy in-state airplay in the wake of the courthouse fiasco and its thrilling manhunt, which made headlines all over the country.

But in making a documentary about the controversial Tijerina, Mexican director Ángel Estrada Soto found that people who spent time with the activist — who the press dubbed “King Tiger” and the “Chicano Malcolm X” — would talk about him, the Cuidad Juárez-based writer and filmmaker said, “but not in front of a camera.”

Estrada Soto’s Spanish-language film, They Called Me King Tiger, has its New Mexico premiere at the Santa Fe Film Festival on Friday, Feb. 15. After the 7:30 p.m. screening, the filmmaker will participate in a Q&A with the audience.

In 2008, a friend called to alert Estrada Soto that Tijerina was living in Juárez. While visiting with the ailing leader, Estrada Soto became fascinated by the way Tijerina, a former itinerant preacher, described the divine inspiration for his activism, detailing religious visions and a neardeath experience at age five.

“That was the hook for me to tell this story — more than his political activity, more than land grants,” the director said. “When you want to understand why someone goes so far in his beliefs and struggle, you will