Plan of San Diego Narrative
(This is a narrative I wrote for the Plan of San Diego historical marker application. I wanted to make it available to anyone interested.)
Introduction
On January 6, 1915, nine men signed the Plan of San Diego in Duval County, Texas. Before the end of the year, hundreds of people, mostly Mexican-Americans, were killed in the Rio Grande Valley under the seditious call to action laid out in this document. It brought about a turbulent time in South Texas, where many law enforcement officers abandoned their oaths to preserve and protect. The Plan launched the entire economic and social fabric of the Rio Grande Valley into upheaval. The plot spread
panic and fear far and wide to the rest of Texas and the United States. The rebellion prompted by the Plan of San Diego had international implications, both in the Western hemisphere and in Europe.
On January 24, 1915, Hidalgo County merchant Deodoro Guerra detained for authorities in
The Immigration Service took custody of Ramos and transferred him to Cameron County for questioning. During his interrogation, Ramos indicated that someone handed the Plan of San Diego to the nine signers in a Monterey jail where Mexican authorities held them for their support of deposed Mexican President Victoriano Huerta. This statement has led many historians to conclude that San Diego, Texas, played no part in the Plan that bore its name. However, Ramos offered this statement while under duress, and it could well be that he may have provided this scenario to protect his associates in the Plan. It was “uncorroborated testimony” that was “extremely vague.” Historians have offered no evidence that Ramos was, in fact, in jail in Monterey at the time, while he had lived and worked in San Diego for several months. Moreover, the Bureau of Investigation records show that Federal authorities had concluded that “The Plan of San Diego was dated at San Diego on January 6, 1915. There is nothing to indicate to the contrary that it was not signed and executed there.”
Additionally, court documents in Ramos’ case all indicate that the signers of the Plan of San Diego did so in San Diego, Duval County, Texas, despite authorities’ knowledge of Ramos’s admission made in his interrogation that someone else wrote the Plan in Monterey. Both Immigration Inspectors S.B. Hopkins (interpreter) and J.R. Harold (translator) admitted some knowledge of Spanish but hedged on their proficiency.
Charles Cumberland, the first historian to write about the Plan of San Diego in 1954, observed:
the raids cannot be ascribed to any single factor, nor is any single factor dominant. International politics, irredentism, prejudice, discrimination, nationalism, cupidity, selfishness, and local politics all contributed to the inception and the continuation of the destructive raids, but it was the combination rather than the isolated factors which was responsible.
Still, historians offer varied reasons as to the source of the Plan. Some say the Plan was part of a larger German plot to keep the United States out of the war engulfing Europe. Some adhere to the theory that the signers of the Plan were supporters of deposed Mexican president Victoriano Huerta. Still, others point to Mexican General Venustiano Carranza as the instigator. Followers of Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón and the Mexican Liberal Party get the credit for the Plan from some historians. Other historians believe that Mexican Texans’ historical treatment is reason enough to credit the Plan’s origination to South Texas. Douglas W. Richmond opens his treatise on the Plan with the following:
Decades of repression and systematic exploitation made the Mexican community of South Texas receptive to radical demands for change. By 1911 immigration and the growth of revolutionary ideas within Mexico increased the possibility for armed revolt in the United States.
Roberto Mendoza asserts that to understand the appeal of the Plan of San Diego, one has to consider the irredentist fervor inculcated into South Texas Mexicans by the 1848 acquisition of the United States of their lands. The Americanization of the area inflicted many hardships for Mexican Texans. Many lost ancestral lands. The new Anglo power structure mistreated the Mexicans who had resided in the region for decades. Juan Cortina, between 1859 and 1873, launched a series of confrontations, much like the Plan of San Diego, in retribution for Anglo acts of injustice. In 1892, Catarino Garza’s call for revolution against Porfirio Diaz appealed to Mexican Americans facing their Anglo neighbors’ tyrannical temperament. Indeed, the idea of irredentism was in the air of South Texas for years.
Candelario Saenz points to Duval County conditions as reason enough for Mexican Texans to embrace the idea of the Plan of San Diego. Saenz points primarily to the 1912 massacre of three Mexican American leaders on the courthouse grounds by three Anglos as a pivotal event. The anger generated in the community by the shooting itself and the subsequent acquittal of the three Anglos by a Richmond County jury only served to keep the fire of discrimination smoldering.
Saenz, as does James Sandos, points to a group with a socialist bent organized in San Diego as early as 1910 by Agustin Garza, another signer of the Plan. Additionally, Sandos cites Bureau of Investigation reports that name four of the Plan’s signers as having a bar in San Diego where the Plan was debated and adopted. William Hager points to a personal interview with John Sutherland, a longtime attorney in San Diego, who said he had seen and heard some twenty men debate the Plan across the street from his home.
There is no need to litigate the different, often opposing, views of historians relative to the Plan of San Diego. They all attempt to reveal, as best they can with the sources they had at hand, what happened. What is incontrovertible is that the Plan of San Diego caused hundreds of innocent people to lose their lives, the region’s economy to stagnate for years, many people leaving their homes, and the hate associated with ethnic differences shamefully come to the forefront. Perhaps, Harris and Sadler expressed it best; “in the final analysis, what is important about the Plan is not who wrote it or where it was written but rather the use to which it was put.” Juan Gómez-Quiñones adds, “Doubts concerning the authorship of the Plan, notwithstanding, military actions did occur which were related to the Plan’s proposals.”
Many lost their lives under the Plan
On February 20, when adherents were supposed to put the Plan of San Diego into action, officers armed with Winchesters patrolled South Texas towns’ streets as “great unrest and nervousness existed” among the people. They breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened, and people thought there was “no foundation to the alleged conspiracy.” But not all was quite as it seemed. Several incidents aimed at organizing the Plan’s implementation occurred, but state officials dismissed the Plan as a visionary scheme that was meaningless. Nonetheless, Texas Governor James E. Ferguson wrote to President Woodrow Wilson that he was receiving daily reports that Mexicans were crossing over the Rio Grande and committing “all manner of depredation.” Local officials, the governor wrote, cannot handle the situation. He informed the President that he had increased the Ranger force and appropriated more money, but conditions were only growing worse. He asked Wilson to send 30,000 troops to Texas to help Rangers for one year.
While things remained mostly quiet through June, in July, raids began happening almost daily. Anglos suspected that any man of “Latin” appearance, particularly if he were a stranger, was a spy or a raider. Trigger happy civilians and local officers were prone to shoot before ascertaining the intentions of such men. Citizens became panic-stricken and began to organize into protective societies, took law enforcement into their own hands, and began to dish out “summary justice.” Governor Ferguson continued his appeals to the national government for help.
In August, the tempo of raids picked up. Funston became convinced that Carranza troops were involved in the raids and ordered a Battalion of Infantry transferred from Laredo to Brownsville for temporary duty. Cameron County Sheriff W.E. Vann killed two men suspected of being raiders. In Hidalgo County, Sheriff A.Y. Baker killed three suspected raiders, and Rangers hanged three more near Rio Hondo in Cameron County. The Corpus Christi Caller blared in a headline Ropes and Guns are Fast Ridding Border Counties of Mexican Outlaw Band.
Unfolding events related to the Plan of San Diego convinced General Funston that Washington needed to address the question. The General became aware of a report that 1,000 men had pledged loyalty to the Plan of San Diego. Several hundred more were amassing ten miles below Brownsville, ready to cross into Texas. The New York Times reported that 3,000 men had subscribed to the Plan of San Diego.
The Rangers and other law enforcement officers continued to dispense their brand of border justice to all Mexicans that they believed may be involved in the raids, whether or not they were American citizens. All Mexicans were required to provide identity and state the purpose of their presence. If they made what the law enforcement officials considered an aggressive move, their life was “forfeited.”
By September, fear grew that the Plan of San Diego was gaining momentum, and the carnage continued. In October, General Carranza announced that he would replace the commander at Matamoros, Colonel Nafarrate, and his entire command with Gen. Eugenio Lopez and troops from Tampico, who had no sympathies to residents on either side of the border. By mid-October, the relative peace beckoned for a return to normalcy. Then on the night of October 18, the apparent lull in the fighting was shattered when a band of Mexicans attacked a St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico train. On October 19, President Wilson recognized Carranza as the leader of Mexico, and Carranza immediately promised to punish all offenders of the peace and ordered his men to arrest the rebels.
By the fall of 1915, the Plan of San Diego raiders had South Texas fully embroiled in a race war. The finding of dead bodies of Mexicans reached a point where it created little or no interest. Only American deaths aroused the newspapers and the Anglo community. According to official figures, raiders killed eleven U.S. soldiers and six Anglo civilians, for a total of sixteen Anglo casualties. No one can accurately determine the number of dead Mexicans and Tejanos bodies since their assassins often left in the brush for the vultures. Estimates range from 100 to 300, with the last number being the number which General Funston believed state and local officials executed by hanging or shooting.
Plan of San Diego caused economic and social upheaval
Before normal conditions returned, the raids had practically ruined the farm economy, and more than half the Valley’s total population had left. Many Mexicans began to return to Mexico because of treatment by Rangers. Vigilante committees and local officials burned homes and confiscated arms and ammunition belonging to Mexican families. Self-appointed lawmen forced Mexican families in outlying regions to move into population centers to keep a watchful eye on them. The killing and raiding had prompted a tide of out-migration with Mexicans fleeing south to Mexico and the Anglos leaving for the north or the cities. Newspapers reported that 7,000 Mexicans, or 40 percent of Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, left the area. It was a “dramatic exodus of labor and a decline in social stability.”
Plan of San Diego spread panic and fear far and wide
In 1915, 1,023 news stories on the Plan of San Diego appeared in forty-five of the forty-eight states then in the union. The Portal of Texas History, which has an extensive collection of the state’s newspapers but not all of them, reported ninety-five stories on the Plan of San Diego. Without a doubt, the Plan of San Diego was a big story in 1915.
Most news stories about the Plan in Texas newspapers appeared in the inside pages through the summer months. The Plan began to appear in most Texas newspapers’ front page by mid-August, including the larger dailies. While most of the headlines dealt with raids, troop movements, court cases, and other developments regarding the Plan of San Diego, some were outright ethnocentric. The polemics were straight-out bigoted. The Spanish language press also contributed to publicizing the Plan and its activities.
Of course, the media was merely reporting what it heard. Behind the scenes, the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI’s predecessor, had numerous ongoing investigations from California to Texas on matters tagged “neutrality matter.” The Bureau had investigators throughout the state following leads, often exaggerated or downright false, provided by the populace.
Plan of San Diego had international implications
The Plan of San Diego also had a significant impact on the Mexican Revolution and America’s readiness to enter World War I. Carranza benefited greatly from the Plan of San Diego. Some argue that he initiated and implemented the Plan, while others believe he merely benefited from it. In either case, many historians believe that he used the raids in the Valley to extract recognition from President Wilson, thus giving him the upper hand over his competing revolutionary chiefs and ultimately swinging the revolution his way.
Another major international event impacted by the Plan of San Diego was World War I. Some historians argue that the Plan of San Diego was initiated by the Germans as a scheme to keep the United States occupied to keep it out of the conflict in Europe. The interception of the Zimmerman telegram gave credence to this conspiracy theory. Sandos also suggests that the Zimmerman telegram gives credence to the involvement of the Japanese in the Plan of San Diego and U.S.-Japanese negotiations on their respective spheres of influence.
Perhaps a more significant contribution of the Plan of San Diego was to America’s involvement in World War I. In its efforts to control the raids and the killing, President Wilson continued to send troops to the area until practically all the armed forces available for combat duty were in the Rio Grande Valley. By 1916, the entire 158,000 men in the National Guard were sent to the border with orders to ready themselves “up to war strength immediately.” The Plan of San Diego, therefore, contributed significantly to the Armed Forces preparedness for World War I.
Undertold Story
While historians have written scholarly journal articles and books about the Plan of San Diego, it is absent from textbooks. As Ben Johnson points out in his book Revolution in Texas:
Few residents of South Texas are aware of the uprising or its brutal suppression; no signs, markers, or monuments note the existence of the architects of the Plan of San Diego or the victims of vigilantism that their doomed quest provoked.
Johnson adds that “as a matter of public memory, or even wider scholarly interest, these events remain terribly obscure.” It is without a doubt and “undertold story” in Texas history.
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