Culiacán: Tomato Town

El Antiguo

Nations rose and fell in the good rich soil of Mexico. Through-ing from the darkest recesses of antiquity's tome to theeror. Pyramids and temples, snatched from the oblivion ofaveler's delight. Chichen-Itza, Uxmal and Itzamal remainMixtec-Zapotec peoples; El Tajin and Yohualinchanreminders of the Toltecs; and innumerable signs of the Martyrdoms speak eloquently of their greatness. These peoplesf their own. They worshipped fiery gods, drew great richesut of the dust they came, and they perished in the dust.they left an imprint on those who followed them, andnobility on the Mexican people.

IF YOU live in Des Moines, or Indianapolis, or in many other places in the middlewest, you probably have never heard of Culiacán, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, Republic of México. Yet you should know of Culiacán (Cool-e-ah-cahn) because chances are that a product from there graces your dinner table ever so many times during the year. That product is tomatoes.

Culiacán is in the very heart of one of the most productive farming areas in Mexico, an area becoming of greater importance each year as the development of water for irrigation increases and as the market for Culiacán tomatoes gets larger.

The red, ripe tomato is the gold crop for farmers in and about the city. There are now 12,500 acres under cultivation in the district, being watered principally by natural flow irrigation from streams coming from the mountains and from diesel pumping-wells. Already underway is a major irrigation development which will store enough water to carry crops through the dry season and cut the costs and the needs of pumping water.

Last season alone Culiacán sent 8,000 carloads of tomatoes to American and Canadian markets, each car averaging about $700. Over 5,000 people are engaged in this enterprise, testifying to its importance. Eight thousand carloads of tomatoes are enough to decorate many sandwiches and salads. And better yet, the weather in Culiacán being entirely different from tomato-growing localities in the United States, Sinaloa's tomatoes do not compete with our own.

But the tomato crop in this area is a one-crop-a-year affair, but the season lasts from December through April. Seventy per cent of the entire crop is discarded as culls, merchandising managers rejecting these culls for shape, ripeness or for other signs of imperfection. Tons and tons of tomatoes are either fed to cattle or thrown away.

But the fame of Culiacán doesn't rest strictly on tomatoes. Here it was back in the days of the Spanish Conquest that most of the expeditions of the Conquistadores started for our Southwest. Expeditions formed at México City would stop over at Culiacán for final refitting before plunging for fame and fortune into the desert country of upper Sinaloa, Sonora, and Arizona. Tomatoes and history. A strange combination.

Besides its importance as a state capital, Culiacán is a busy thriving city, showing many signs of growth and expansion. There is much building going on and the government under Gov. Rodolpho Loaiza (Lo-eye-za) is doing everything possible to cooperate with the builder and investor.

The town is inland from the ocean, but is on the mainline of the Sud Pacífico del México, between Mazatlán and Hermosillo, in Sonora. The completion of the highway from Nogales, Arizona, to Guadalajara, which will eventually give the West Coast of México a through-international highway, should mean considerable tourist business after the war from all of this area of the West Coast.

The American automobile, which long since has found its way into the most distant parts of México, can be found in numbers in even out-of-way places in Sinaloa; so that Culiacán gives the appearance of being a very up-to-date city. There is a constantly growing number of paved streets and a brisk state highway department is bringing in an abundant of such American institutions as stop and-go-signs. Business men and leaders in the political life of Sinaloa's capital are pushing a highway system connecting Culiacán with places all over the state. The major road development in the area at this time, however, is that portion of the international highway between Nogales and Guadalajara which is cutting its way through the state of Sinaloa.One of the chief methods of transportation in the city proper is the small one-horse sulky seating two people, besides the driver. Bus and truck transportation are constantly gaining in importance.

With México's declaration of war on the Axis Powers, many Japanese farmers in the vicinity of Culiacán were moved into the interior. The government has a long-established military garrison in the area and every effort is being made to ferret out subversive elements, who, being in communication, for instance, with enemy