Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904-1923

This is the story of events set in motion in South Texas when the anarchist Plan of San Diego was set between 1915 and 1917. The rebels planned to reclaim lands the United States lost in 1846 and to kill every North America male over sixteen. Sandos's book is a groundbreaking attempt to recover a historical memory long repressed in both the United States and Mexico, a failed plan that for almost 70 years colored official American attitudes toward Mexico.

During the early twentieth century, social and political unrest along the border between Mexico and the United States led to a dramatic uprising known as the Plan of San Diego, a revolt that broke out in south Texas in 1916 and called for the return of Texas to Mexico and the extermination of all adult males in Texas over age sixteen.

    Amid this ferment, the Flores Magón brothers came of age. Activists and later anarchists through long years of exile in California, eventually they enlarged their political attacks to encompass economic exploitation and ethnic discrimination against the downtrodden of the southwestern United States. Using a Spanish language newspaper, Regeneración, they acquired a wide spectrum of adherent's, from wealthy aristocrats through the railroad workers of Los Angeles to campesino's in the Borderlands. Domestic partisans included Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and African American; foreign participants included Mexican revolutionary factions and German and Japanese operatives.