#OTD in 1915, three supposed participants in the “Plan de San Diego” were killed by law enforcement. It is not known whether soldiers, law enforcement, or Texas Rangers were the ones to pull the trigger.
Texas Rangers and others killed Mexican Americans near the border at random in retribution for “bandit raids” that had been occurring near the border of Texas and Mexico, which many associated with the manifesto.
The Plan de San Diego detailed an uprising of Mexican citizens and U.S. citizens of Mexican descent who would recapture the Southwestern states for Mexico. Because of this fear of uprising, Governor Fergusson requested an additional $30,000 from Congress to send an additional 30 Texas Rangers to the border.
The late summer and fall of 1915 proved to be the bloodiest of the year, with Rangers and others exacting a “revenge by proxy” campaign against ethnic Mexicans, regardless of guilt, for being in a general location of a crime.
Contemporary observers and later scholars have found it difficult to estimate the total death toll They have generally estimated that anywhere between several hundred and 5,000 ethnic Mexicans lost their lives to such violence between 1915-1920.
The killing of thee supposed outlaws near Brownsville, Texas on August 12, 1915, and the capture of twenty-two of their saddle horses, exhibited only a small instance of this kind of violence and killing by law enforcement near the border.
In multiple newspaper reports, it was said that details of the murders were not available due to the attitude of “reticence,” or “refusing to give details of fights in which they were concerned.”
This is one instance of many where violence toward Mexican Americans was discounted by the law enforcement performing the violence, and the media chose not to dig any deeper.
Additionally, the belief by law enforcement that they had the power to murder civilians without any burden of proof or later investigation reflects a sense of impunity that allowed for so many more killings.
https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/2/4/56
The unnamed men killed in this lynching would be only a few of the many killed in these years.
Information for this thread is thanks in large part to Gunpowder Justice by Julian Samora, Joe Bernal, and Albert Pena, The Injustice Never Leaves You by Monica Munoz Martinez, and Revolution in Texas by Benjamin Johnson, as well as https://www.lynchingintexas.org.
