Bartee Haile
The nine signers of the “Plan of San Diego,” a blueprint for a borderland bloodbath, were charged on Jan. 24, 1915 with conspiracy against the United States government.
As revolution raged in their homeland, Mexican exiles and their American cousins revived an old dream. Article after article in the 230 Spanish-language newspapers from California to Texas talked about taking back the territory lost in the 1848 war with the gringos.
Four Mexican anarchists, led by a former customs officer named Basilio Ramos, opened a cantina in San Diego, Texas in the summer of 1914. Under the very noses of the apathetic authorities, they attracted an audience for their ideological harangues by passing out free drinks.
The agitators returned to Mexico in December 1914 with their most promising convert, Luis de la Rosa. Reunited by the Mexican police, they celebrated the New Year in a Monterrey jail cell.
Six days later, the five anarchists and four sympathetic inmates signed a document titled “Plan of San Diego, Texas.” The inflammatory manifesto called for the armed liberation of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California -- the land Mexico swapped for peace 67 years earlier.
The Plan was a recipe for race war that pitted Mexicans, blacks, Indians and Japanese against Anglo-Americans. White males over the age of 16 were marked for death.
Black participants were to be rewarded with six states of their own -- presumably Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah -- and Indians with the restoration of their tribal grounds. What was in it for the Japanese was anybody’s guess.
The revolt was scheduled to start at precisely 2:00 a.m. on Feb. 20, 1915. The conspirators were not released until mid-January, which left them just five weeks to carry out one of the most ambitious plots in North American history.
Soon after slipping across the Rio Grande, Basilio Ramos was arrested in McAllen when a potential recruit tipped off the sheriff. Government investigators first learned of the Plan from the copy he carried. Since Ramos’ confederates had been foolish enough to put their names on the incriminating paper, the U.S. attorney had no trouble obtaining a speedy indictment.
The date of the Southwest insurrection came and went without so much as a ripple. Taking this fact and the absurdity of the scheme into account, a federal judge said Ramos “ought to be tried for lunacy not conspiracy against the United States.” Freed on bail pending trial, Ramos promptly and predictably disappeared.
But amusement turned to alarm in the Rio Grande Valley after a rash of Plan-inspired incidents. Forty Mexican nationals murdered two Anglo men on a Willacy County ranch on the Fourth of July and a teenager near Raymondville during a two-week rampage that ended with their successful escape.
Responding to a similar raid in early August north of Brownsville, a posse proceeded to the ranch of Ancieto Pizana, a well-to-do Texan of Mexican ancestry. In the ensuing gunbattle, the posse sustained four casualties and Pizana’s 12 year old son suffered a leg wound so severe the limb had to be amputated.
Anarchist propaganda allegedly found in Pizana’s home was enough to link him to the Plan. The rancher denied any prior involvement in the plot but readily admitted that the maiming of his boy convinced him to join the guerrilla campaign.
Meanwhile, Luis de la Rosa and 14 heavily armed followers terrorized the Lower Valley. Their strike was preceded by the distribution of a leaflet in Matamoros urging inhabitants to “unite with our brothers in Texas for this is the solemn moment for the vindication of right and justice lost to us for so long a time.”
Following the cold-blooded execution of a father and son at Sebastian on Aug. 6, the De la Rosa band attacked an outpost on the King Ranch. A mixed bag of defenders that included Texas Rangers, soldiers, deputy sheriffs and cowboys killed five raiders before De la Rosa sounded retreat and high-tailed it for the river.
Fear gripped the Valley as random violence became a daily occurrence. “Everyone feels he is about to face a massacre,” a Brownsville resident shuddered. The unprecedented movement south of Mexicans with their household effects heightened the apprehension.
Pizana came out of hiding on Sep. 2 and led 25 riders in a surprise attack on the Fresnos Pump Canal near Harlingen. Three Anglo men were taken captive and subsequently slain.
Indiscriminate reprisals were inevitable and took scores of innocent lives. As a Valley newspaper noted the week after the Pizana raid, “The finding of dead bodies of Mexicans, suspected for various reasons of being connected with the troubles, has reached a point where it creates little or no interest.”
Read all about the early years of the oil frenzy in “Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil” Order your copy for $24.00 by mailing a check to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.
