213 Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 48:2 Fall 2023 © University of California Regents The Forgotten Foundations of Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x Studies El Plan de Santa Barbara and Damián García’s Revolutionary Communist Synthesis, 1967–1980 B. V. Olguín and Edward Giardello On February 22 and 23, 2019, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) held a con- ference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education, written by the Chicano Coordinat- ing Council on Higher Education (1969). 1 The event fêted Chicana/o/x students and staff who were part of this epochal 1969 initiative, several of whom were conference panelists and audience members. They included Cástulo de la Rocha, a prominent member of the group and the CEO of a chain of community health centers that made him a multimillionaire (Thurlow 2019). He had recently helped establish a scholarship fund in the UCSB Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies for students major- ing in the field, and his attendance and prominent role in the conference represented a symbolic confirmation of the success of El Plan de Santa Barbara, as well as the achievements of the broader Chicano movement, or el movimiento, of which it was part. This study, however, challenges the nostalgic historiographies of the field’s founding and the corresponding celebratory appraisals of its con- temporary contours that were exhibited at the conference. We return to the turbulent milieu surrounding the drafting of El Plan de Santa Barbara to recover a little-known figure: Damián García, a Chicano undergradu- ate majoring in cultural anthropology at UCSB. His contemporaneous intersections with the document’s drafters, related student organizations, community initiatives, and broader political activities, along with his