Heirs of a Mexican land grant raided the Tierra Amarilla courthouse in 1967 to arrest the district attorney

In 1832 the Mexican government created the Tierra Amarilla grant, about 600,000 acres, for Manuel Martínez and settlers from Abiquiú. In 1860 Congress confirmed it as a private grant, not a community grant, which Wikipedia attributes to mistranslated and concealed documents. Some Martínez heirs sold to Anglo speculators. By 1883 Thomas Catron had consolidated deeds to the whole grant except the villages and their fields. In 1950 the courts rejected petitions by settlers' descendants to recover the common lands. Reies López Tijerina founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes for heirs of Spanish and Mexican grants; it grew to about 20,000 members. In October 1966 members occupied Echo Amphitheater in Carson National Forest and proclaimed the Republic of San Joaquín del Río de Chama. On 5 June 1967, after eight members were arrested, Tijerina's group raided the Rio Arriba County courthouse to make a citizen's arrest of District Attorney Alfonso Sánchez, who was not there. They shot and wounded a state police officer and the jailer, Eulogio Salazar, beat a deputy, and took the sheriff and a reporter hostage. The National Guard joined the manhunt. About seven months later Salazar was found murdered shortly before he was to testify that Tijerina shot him. The murder is unsolved; Tijerina denied any connection. Tijerina served about two years in prison and died in El Paso on 19 January 2015.