The Fight for the Chicano Nation Chilili Defends the Right to the Land / La Lucha por la Nacion Chicana Chilili Defiende Derecho a las Tierras

Tikeras, N.M.: El Comite para Reformar y Preservar las Tierras de la Merced de Chilili, 1977. Fine.. [10]pp., plus 11 x 8 broadsheet. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled. Very minor creasing and old horizontal fold to broadsheet. Two ephemeral, bilingual pieces on a land struggle between New Mexico developers and local Chicano villagers in Chilili, southeast of Albuquerque during the late 1970s. The broadside present describes an armed police response to a roadblock protest on the edge of town on May 18, 1976. "Dressed in 'flack jackets' and carrying semi-automatic and automatic rifles they rounded up the people of the village -- young and old, men, women, and children. At all times they had their weapons pointed directly at people's head. They had orders to shoot to kill any 'troublemakers' among the villagers.... All of us who cherish freedom and liberty cannot fail to be moved by the heroic people of Chilili...BUT THEY NEED OUR HELP NOW." The pamphlet here describes, in English and Spanish, an evidently more successful protest at which, "On September 1, 1976, over 30 armed Chicano villagers of Chilili, New Mexico blocked and halted development of a road which crossed near the village and which would have opened up the area for more development, more tourists, more rich people moving in and eventually leading to the destruction of the traditional way of life of the Chicano people of Chilili and the destruction of the village itself." The illustrated wrappers depict an armed protest above the title in English and a portrait of Pancho Villa at the head of a column of his men on the Spanish-language side. Unrecorded.