Fifty years ago, June 5, 1967, I was wandering
around the KOAT-7 Big Seven Newsroom wondering about the stories of the day. Then
came the 1000 cycle tone from the New Mexico State Police radio (you know that
long beeeep that we hear when there’s a test of the Emergency Notification
System).
It sounded like something like this:
“Attention all cars and all stations, this station is
now 10-33.”
We were accustomed to the dolling on-an-on of police
and fire radios – BUT – this was different.
10-33 meant something BIG was happening.
Knowing not what, the few of us in the newsroom (maybe
6 at most – 3 of whom actually went out to cover the news) started scouring
around looking for cameras, film, lights. We were preparing to depart for parts
unknown, just in case this was a big deal.
Well, within the hour I had maneuvered my way into
covering the big story. It was the Rio
Arriba County Courthouse in Tierra Amarilla.
The leader of a group of heirs to old Spanish Land
Grants, Reies Tijerina, and a band of followers had just attempted to kidnap
the District Attorney (who wasn’t even there), gotten into a gunfight with the
state police, and taken a deputy sheriff and a newsman covering the story,
hostage.
Now, mind you, this was before cellphones and
satellites – it was before computers.
Before leaving the newsroom for a chartered plane, I
called the Justice of the Peace in Chama (or maybe it was the Mayor) and asked
if he’d meet our plane at a landing strip at Chama Land and Cattle Company –
about 10 miles or so away, and take me to the action. I don’t remember his name, but he did just as
I asked.
So, away I go, in a plane leaving Albuquerque headed
for points north – out of contact with the world, except for the airplane radio,
and they didn’t care.
I didn’t know what to expect.
It took an hour or so to get there.
The landing strip, really a graded and maintained
pasture, was moist from recent rains. We went for it anyway. We were there to cover the news!
Still not quite sure about what was happening, we rolled
on to the scene in that tiny northern New Mexico town.
I did a quick film interview with Benny Naranjo, the
Rio Arriba County Sheriff. He told me
what had happened. Sadly, the film of
that interview is gone, and I don’t recall the specific quotes. I ran off a few more scenes, then gave the
film to the pilot and told him to get it back to Albuquerque – I’d stay around
and cover the story.
Tijerina and some of his followers showed up at the
courthouse that day for a hearing on a somewhat related matter, his brother and
other followers were being arraigned on charges from other incidents involving
the land grant struggle.
Well, they didn’t get the District Attorney, instead
they shot up the courthouse, wounded the jailer and a state police officer,
kidnapped a wire service reporter – all of which launched a massive manhunt
that lasted for days.
Late that afternoon of June 5, 1967, headquartered at a
US Forest Service ranger station in Canjilon, about 20 miles away, law
enforcement of all uniforms commanded by New Mexico State Police Chief Joe
Black went on the search.
Lieutenant
Governor E. Lee Francis called out the National Guard under the command of
Adjutant General John Pershing Jolly. Tanks rolled, without ammunition, but it
was a show of force.
By Martin Salazar / Journal Staff Writer Tuesday, January
20th, 2015
Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal
It had been nearly 40 years, but the images were still
etched in former Gov. David Cargo’s mind. The day was June 5, 1967, and a
caravan of New Mexico National Guard trucks and tanks was headed down
Interstate 25, capping a bizarre day that thrust the obscure mountain village
of Tierra Amarilla in northern Rio Arriba County into the national spotlight.
Some two dozen land grant activists had taken control of the
courthouse, shot up the place, critically wounded a couple of law enforcement
officers, and kidnapped a journalist and another officer.
By that evening – as Cargo was flying back into New Mexico
from Michigan – the state had sprung to action. The lieutenant governor had
mobilized the National Guard and a massive manhunt was underway to capture the
raiders.
“We came in over Santa Fe,” recalled Cargo, who was governor
at the time. “You could look down on La Bajada Hill. As I looked down, I saw
all these trucks and some tanks, and I thought, what in the hell is going on?”
Editor’s note: As
the 40th anniversary of the Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid approached in 2007,
then Journal staff writer Martin Salazar sought out former New Mexico Gov.
David Cargo, who was governor at the time of the raid. Salazar is now publisher
and editor of the Las Vegas Optic newspaper in Las Vegas, N.M. Cargo died in
2013. Here is a republication of Salazar’s June 3, 2007, report for the
Journal.
Tuesday (June 5, 2007) will mark the 40th anniversary of
Tierra Amarilla’s infamous day – the day tensions over lost land grants boiled
over into a blaze of bullets, spilling the blood of a State Police officer and
jailer.
The activists – called the Alianza Federal de Mercedes –
believed huge areas of land around the Southwest awarded as land grants by the
Mexican or Spanish governments had been wrongfully taken away after the region
became part of the United States in the mid19th century.
Participants say the raid brought the injustices to light
and helped spawn some changes. Forty years later, land grant activists are
still fighting, but they’re now appealing to Congress to right the wrongs.
It was a rainy Monday afternoon when the land grant
activists stormed the courthouse in their quest to make a citizen’s arrest of
then District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez.
Three days before the raid, Sanchez blocked a meeting of the
Alianza in Coyote. Eleven members of the group were arrested near Canjilon on
various charges. Eight of them were slated to be arraigned on the day of the
raid.
Alianza members – led by Reies Lopez Tijerina, a charismatic
former evangelical minister – wanted to arrest Sanchez for violating their
rights.
But Sanchez was 92 miles away in Santa Fe fielding telephone
calls from villagers warning that something was about to happen and
coordinating with law enforcement officials in an effort to head it off,
Sanchez told the Journal during a recent interview.
The Alianza sent a few members to scout the courthouse.
After getting the OK, about two dozen Alianza members crammed into a truck, a
station wagon and a car and headed to it.
Tijerina wore a white handkerchief over part of his face as
he and others invaded the courthouse, said Baltasar Martinez, one of the
raiders.
Eulogio Salazar, a jailer, was shot in the face and chest as
he tried to jump out a courthouse window. State Police officer Nick Saiz was
hit in the left arm and chest while inside the courthouse.
Both men survived the wounds, but Salazar was later
murdered, 10 days before he was to have testified against Tijerina. Tijerina
has denied any involvement in Salazar’s murder, which remains unsolved.
Those in the courthouse were rounded up in the County
Clerk’s Office. Among them was then United Press International reporter (and
later Albuquerque Journal editor and columnist) Larry Calloway. He recalled
being taken at gunpoint through the courthouse halls that were spattered with
blood.
After realizing that the district attorney wasn’t at the
courthouse, most of the raiders fled. But in the chaos, Martinez and another
raider were left behind.
They took Calloway and a sheriff’s deputy hostage, putting
them in a pickup truck and driving through calm streets shooting up police
cars, Calloway wrote soon after his ordeal. Both men eventually escaped their
captors.
The raiders fled into the mountains.
State Police from throughout northern New Mexico rushed to
Tierra Amarilla. A State Police helicopter with two shotgun riders aboard
swooped in and out over the hills around Canjilon.
And National Guard troops on tanks scoured the countryside
looking for those who had shot up the courthouse.
Tijerina and other raiders were eventually nabbed or turned
themselves in. Tijerina ended up serving two years in federal prison for an
Alianza takeover of the Echo Amphitheater in the Carson National Forest near
Abiquiu.
In the aftermath of the raid, Cargo and Sanchez would point
fingers at one another, Sanchez saying Cargo encouraged the group by coddling
them and leading them on and Cargo saying Sanchez forced the standoff through
his hardnosed actions. A reflective Cargo said conditions were probably ripe
for the raid. “Everything just came together,” he said. “You had the war in
Vietnam. You had unrest all over the country. You had assassinations. You had
everything going on, a lot of unrest.”
In today’s electronic world, the Twitter would explode
with coverage of that raid, satellite trucks from around the world would beam
live TV from sleepy northern New Mexico, and our little ol’ Land of Enchantment
would have publicity nobody could pay for.
A native northern New Mexican, I can say, it wasn’t
our proudest moment – and many of the complaints that have been registered by
those who believe they were wronged by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (go
here for more) may never be answered.
One lasting memory I have of that incident, and
subsequent reporting visits to Tierra Amarilla, that might reflect how serious the situation was, State Police Sgt Richard C
de Baca inquired of me, “Do you have a gun with you?”
I didn’t.
“You should get one,” he said.
The next day I went to H. Cook Sporting Goods in
Albuquerque and purchased a .38 caliber police revolver – and for a long time
took it with me every time I went “up north”.
H. Cook Sporting Goods is no longer, and neither is my
ownership of that pistol.
P.S.
While this was happening in little ol’ remote northern
New Mexico, the world turned focus to the Arab-Israeli 6-Day War.
From Wikipedia: A war fought in 1967 by Israel on one side and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan on the other. Israel, victorious, took over the Golan Heights, the Jordanian portion of Jerusalem, the Jordanian West Bank of the Jordan River, and alarge piece of territory in northeastern Egypt, including the Sinai Peninsula, which contains Mount Sinai. Israel still occupies all these territories except the Sinai Peninsula, which it gave back to Egypt in 1982. Israel intains that its security would be enormously endangered if it withdrew from the other places.
(Photos used in this posting came off the internets. The picture of the donkey and the tank was taken by Ray Cary of the Albuquerque Journal. Unknown source for the picture of Reies Tijerina. The picture of the Rio Arriba County Courthouse could have been taken by anyone.)
