The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement by Lorena Oropeza

Abstract

Reviewed by: The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement by Lorena Oropeza Ignacio M. García The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement. By Lorena Oropeza. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 392. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) The last time I saw Reies López Tijerina was at a Chicano studies conference in the 1980s. He walked silently and unnoticed through the book exhibits, looking fragile and less imposing than he used to. Many young scholars were oblivious to the fact that a legend was among them. Ten years earlier, the first time I met him, he had been an imposing figure, commanding attention whether he spoke to a full auditorium or to students who sat literally at his feet while he discussed themes, such as Chicanos being part of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, more commonly heard at a religious revival than a political discussion. Even those, however, had sounded like a political rallying cry against an unfair system. Tijerina was always a complicated man, quite different from the other three members of the “Four Horsemen” of the Chicano movement, César Chávez, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, and José Ángel Gutiérrez. While Tijerina was less ideological than they were, his early scathing assessments of American society previewed the Chicano activist agenda as it related to stolen land, the use of the Spanish language, the Indigenous roots of Mexican Americans, the reality of white racism, and the need for ethnic alliances. Many Chicano activists and scholars gave his occasional contradictions a pass because he was the only one who had literally taken up arms against the system in 1967 with his Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants). [End Page 100] In The King of Adobe, Lorena Oropeza provides a nuanced biography of Tijerina, allowing readers to see how the man most would remember as a militant land grant activist and fiery Chicano leader constructed his own life. Extreme poverty, weak parental support, and the lack of significant education might have resulted in an insignificant life had Tijerina not found religion as a young man. Oropeza demonstrates how his embrace of a rigid form of Protestantism, his experience as a traveling Pentecostal preacher, and his effort to establish a utopian community all helped to mold his character into the shape of an activist. She points to his failure as a religious prophet being followed by his rebirth as a land grants advocate, a cause he learned about while preaching through New Mexico. His passion, she argues, dovetailed neatly with his bitter dislike of whites, whom he saw as exploiting his people, robbing them of their land, their language, and their culture. Oropeza’s work is meticulous in detail, incisive in analysis, and provides another facet of the rich history of Mexican people on the American side of the border. Studying Tijerina, Oropeza shows, helps readers understand the radicalization of the Mexican American civil rights agenda and its evolution into a human rights crusade. I wish, however, that the author had spent more time on his relationships with the other three “horsemen” of the movement because he helped radicalize them and provided a foundation for their politics. That omission notwithstanding, this welcome biography significantly contributes to our understanding of the Chicano movement and of the Mexican American struggle for liberation. Ignacio M. García Brigham Young University Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association