8 UCLA DAILY BRUIN Thursday, February 22, 1968

'Mexican-American in Southwest'

UMAS symposium set

Reies Lopez Tijerina leader of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federation of Free-City States), will be the featured speaker at today's Mexican-American symposium, "The Mexican-American in the Southwest," set for 2:30 p.m. in the Upstairs.

Tijerina first came to national attention last June when he and members of the Alianza took over the country court house in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico and held law officers as hostages for several hours.

The New Mexico National Guard and state police were eventually called in by Governor Cargo. "This was not a random outburst of violence but the manifestation of the frustration which comes from poverty and hopelessness," a UMAS spokesman said.

Tijerina said that it was a part of his strategy to force a confrontation with the federal government.

Tijerina founded his Alianza in 1963 as a vehicle for bringing action to enforce the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo regarding the land grants which Tijerina feels the United States has not honored.

When the United States Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and took the territories of New Mexico and Northern California from the defeated Republic of Mexico, land grants in the area totaled an estimated 33,000,000 acres.

However, the Treaty promised to protect the property rights of Mexican landowners living on the land grant properties, and during the early years of American occupation this ownership of land was recognized.

But with the coming of the railroad and the necessity to ship cattle and mutton to Midwestern markets as quickly as possible, the land was needed as grazing land. So the U.S. government then required that documented proof be made by the land grant holder before it would recognize ownership.

Those not able to produce documents had their lands reverted to "public domain."

In a single generation of range-grabbing and land speculations, the UMAS spokesman said, Spanish-Americans of New Mexico lost what "their forefathers had held since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

It is with this in mind, the spokesman added, that Tijerina has launched his fight to restabish the rights to use of the land originally held by their ancestors.

Other speakers participating in the Symposium are Cezar Chavez, executive director of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee; Ralph Guzman, co-director of the Mexican-American study project and Bert Corona, chairman of the Mexican-American Political Association.