Plan de Santa Bárbara

The plan itself begins with a manifesto which calls for a renaissance and a "quest for cultural expression and freedom" and continues by pushing back against racist power structures and assimilation and a push toward the importance of community and pride in Chicanismo. The manifesto asks the colleges and universities within state of California to act in the following areas:

1. Admission and recruitment of Chicano students, faculty, administrators, and staff;

2. A curriculum program and an academic major relevant to the Chicano cultural and historical experience;

3. Support and tutorial programs;

4. Research programs;

5. Publications programs; and

6. Community, cultural, and social action programs.

Finally, it calls for students, faculty, employees and the community to come together as "central and decisive designers and administrators of these programs".

Following the manifesto, the document lays out a plan for organizing Chicano programs; recruitment and admissions, support programs, curriculum, political action, the outline of the degrees offered including a Bachelor of Arts and an associate degree, and proposed courses including those for Chicano history, contemporary politics of the Southwest, and Mexican American sociology. The document closes with an outline of a Barrio Center program which aims to reach out to students outside of the colleges and universities in regards to dissemination of college entrance information, community engagement and the presence of on-going research proposed by Chicano scholars. Throughout the plan are pictures of those in the Chicano movement as well as art drawn by members of MEChA. This manifesto was adopted in April 1969.

Critical response

Indigenous history and traditional myths were used in the Chicano movement to create a nationalist political identity based on reclaiming cultures and histories. They were also purposed to imagine Aztlán, the mythical homeland for Chicana/o people, as both a physical place and a nexus for change in educational and academic communities. The concept of Aztlán is given a home in higher education, as those who created this plan were “students, faculty, administrators, and community delegates representing…La Alta California, Aztlán.” This text includes myriad references to “La Raza de Aztlán” and indigenous ways of knowing across subjects. Proposed curricula include indigenous histories of science, sociology, architecture, and music, among many other subjects. Because of this, some argue that the Chicano movement was exemplified and institutionalized through projects like El Plan de Santa Bárbara. Imagining the future of education is described as a matter of social justice for Chicana/o authors, as it is a way for them to imagine a world outside of colonial constructs. Thus, professors, students, and administrators from UC Santa Barbara and Chicana/o Studies departments across the country reference El Plan de Santa Bárbara as a key player in the institutionalization of Chicano ideology and its recognition across the Southwest and within the academic community. Given the context of Chicana/o exclusion in academia, this plan is described as an explicit call for equity.