PLAN OF SAN DIEGO. With the outbreak of revolution in northern Mexico in 1910, federal authorities and officials of the
state of Texas feared that the violence and disorder might spill
over into the Rio
Grande valley.
The Mexican and Mexican-American populations residing in the Valley far
outnumbered the Anglo population. Many Valley residents either had relatives
living in areas of Mexico affected by revolutionary activity or aided the
various revolutionary factions in Mexico. The revolution caused an influx of political
refugees and illegal immigrants into the border region, politicizing the Valley
population and disturbing the traditional politics of the region. Some radical
elements saw the Mexican Revolutionqv as
an opportunity to bring about drastic political and economic changes in South Texas. The most extreme example of this was a
movement supporting the "Plan of San Diego," a revolutionary
manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town of San
Diego on January 6, 1915. The plan, actually drafted in a jail in Monterrey,
Nuevo León, provided for the formation of a
"Liberating Army of Races and Peoples," to be made up of Mexican
Americans, African Americans, and Japanese,qv
to "free" the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and
Colorado from United States control. The liberated states would be organized
into an independent republic, which might later seek annexation to Mexico. There would be a no-quarter race war, with summary
execution of all white males over the age of sixteen. The revolution was to
begin on February 20, 1915. Federal and state officials found a copy of the plan
when local authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrested Basilio Ramos,
Jr., one of the leaders of the plot, on January 24, 1915.
The arrival of February 20 produced only
another revolutionary manifesto, rather than the promised insurrection. Similar
to the original plan, this second Plan of San Diego emphasized the
"liberation" of the proletariat and focused on Texas, where a "social republic" would be established
to serve as a base for spreading the revolution throughout the southwestern United States. Indians were also to be enlisted in the cause. But with no signs of revolutionary activity, state and
federal authorities dismissed the plan as one more example of the revolutionary
rhetoric that flourished along the border. This feeling of complacency was
shattered in July 1915 with a series of raids in the lower Rio Grande valley connected with the Plan of San Diego. These
raids were led by two adherents of Venustiano Carranza, revolutionary general, and Aniceto
Pizaña and Luis De la Rosa,qv
residents of South Texas. The bands used the guerilla tactics of disrupting
transportation and communication in the border area and killing Anglos. In
response, the United States Army moved reinforcements into the area.
A third version of the plan called for the
foundation of a "Republic of Texas" to be made up of Texas, New
Mexico, California, Arizona, and parts of Mississippi and Oklahoma. San Antonio, Texas, was to serve as revolutionary headquarters, and the
movement's leadership continued to come from South Texas. Raids originated on both sides of the Rio Grande, eventually assuming a pattern of guerilla warfare.
Raids from the Mexican side came from territory under the control of Carranza, whose officers were accused of supporting the
raiders. When the United States recognized Carranza as
president of Mexico in October 1915, the raids came to an abrupt halt.
Relations between the United States and Carranza quickly turned
sour, however, amid growing violence along the border. When forces under
another revolutionary general, Francisco (Pancho) Villa,qv attacked Columbus, New Mexico, in March
1916, the United States responded by sending a large military force under Gen.
John J. Pershingqv into northern Mexico in
pursuit of Villa. When the United States rejected Carranza's demands
to withdraw Pershing's troops, fear of a military conflict between the United States and Mexico grew. In this volatile context, there was a renewal
of raiding under the Plan of San Diego in May 1916. Mexican officials were even
considering the possibility of combining the San Diego raiders with regular Mexican forces in an attack on Laredo. In late June, Mexican and United States officials agreed to a peaceful settlement of
differences, and raids under the Plan of San Diego came to a halt.
The Plan of San Diego and the raids that
accompanied it were originally attributed to the supporters of the ousted
Mexican dictator Gen. Victoriano Huerta,qv
who had been overthrown by Carranza in 1914. The
evidence indicates, however, that the raids were carried out by followers of Carranza, who manipulated the movement in an effort to
influence relations with the United States. Fatalities directly linked to the raids were
surprisingly small; between July 1915 and July 1916 some thirty raids into Texas produced only twenty-one American deaths, both
civilian and military. More destructive and disruptive was the near race war
that ensued in the wake of the plan as relations between the whites and the
Mexicans and Mexican Americans deteriorated in 1915-16. Federal reports
indicated that more than 300 Mexicans or Mexican Americans were summarily
executed in South Texas in the atmosphere generated by the plan. Economic
losses ran into the millions of dollars, and virtually all residents of the
lower Rio Grande valley suffered some disruption in their lives from
the raids. Moreover, the plan's legacy of racial antagonism endured long after
the plan itself had been forgotten.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Don M. Coerver
and Linda B. Hall, Texas and the Mexican Revolution: A Study in State and
National Border Policy, 1910-1920
(San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1984). Charles C. Cumberland,
"Border Raids in the Lower Rio Grande Valley-1915," Southwestern
Historical Quarterly 57 (January 1954). Charles H. Harris III and Louis R.
Sadler, "The Plan of San Diego
and the Mexican-U.S. War Crisis of 1916: A Reexamination," Hispanic
American Historical Review 58 (August 1978). Friedrich Katz, The Secret
War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). James
A. Sandos, "The Plan of San Diego: War and Diplomacy on the Texas Border, 1915-1916," Arizona and the West
14 (Spring 1972). James Sandos, Rebellion in the
Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904-1923 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
Don M. Coerver