In 1915 a plan was circulated to begin an uprising in February of that year to throw off white rule. Ambitious, internationalist and bursting with the hopes of a submerged nation, the manifesto called for retaking the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California, to proclaim them a separate Chican@ republic, to restore the indigenous peoples of that new land their sovereignty “so that they assist the revolutionary cause,” as well as pledging to seize a further six states for the allied black nation, that it might have a separate republic in north amerika.

The raids associated with the Plan de San Diego, named for the little town in occupied Texas from which it was allegedly formulated by the Supreme Revolutionary Congress there, destroyed millions in white property, and endangered white rule to such an extent that the Texas Rangers and u.$. army launched thereafter a suppression operation that killed anywhere between 300 to 5,000 people.

The proposed Liberation Army for Races & Peoples that the Plan called for did not truly materialize, but the soil from which it sought to shoot, “the Latin, the Negro, or the Japanese race[s],” outside which the local juntas were forbidden to recruit, showed its ambitious international character, as ambitious, surely, as the great Irish uprising the following year, or the Great October Socialist Revolution the year after that.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Anti-Imperialism.org and the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement join MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within in commemorating the Plan de San Diego throughout the month of August with film presentations and study groups dedicated to Chican@ struggle, Aztlán liberation, national liberation within the north amerikan empire generally, and especially reading groups and individual study surrounding the MIM(Prisons) study-group-produced Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlan, available from Kersplebedeb.

We also encourage our readers to dedicate time this month, if they cannot stage events, study groups or viewings to raise consciousness, to sharpen their own understanding of the necessity for national liberation and anti-imperialism by reading at least one book on Chican@ history and struggle, viewing several documentaries, and especially purchasing Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlan, if possible. For more suggestions on what to do in this auspicious month, see MIM’s pamphlet on the Plan.

Readers can help commemorate the Plan de San Diego and support MIM(Prisons) and United Struggle from Within by sending stamps and other donations to:

MIM(Prisons)

PO Box 40799

San Francisco, CA 94140

One can also put in work transcribing prisoners’ letters, articles and survey information for MIM, among other thankless work they do on behalf of the most oppressed in north amerika. To help out, go here.

Be sure to send Chican@ art and descriptions of what you did to commemorate the Plan by mail above, or to prisoncensorship.info to possibly be featured in Under Lock & Key.