Ciudad Obregon

In the seven years of intelligent and sincere administration of an up-by-the-bootstraps economy, our neighbor, Mexico, has shown the strength of her mettle and nowhere in the Republic is it more visible than in the tremendous region of the Rios Yaqui-Mayo, four hundred miles south of the border in Eastern Sonora. Focal point of this agricultural development of two parallel rivers is the town of Ciudad Obregon. Today's visitor to Ciudad Obregon and its surrounding fields can see at once the thriving symbol of what all of Mexico hopes eventually to become. Twenty years ago there was little in, or for hundreds of miles around, this teeming, modern city except greasewood and cactus. The Mexican nationals were, in fact, still chasing rebellious Indians through it. By 1940 there were a few streets, a few houses and a few people. Today, Ciudad Obregon numbers about 50,000 citizens, and is a progressive city of modern homes, wide streets, fine buildings. In the next five years this figure is expected to double and the resulting irrigated valley will become the The modern metropolis of Ciudad Obregon in the rich Yaqui Valley is an indication of what Mexico hopes to accomplish in the future. Irrigation has brought new lands under cultivation. Area is large wheat producer.

Obregón

world's second largest! It will be Mexico's bread basket! Yesterday, many of these 50,000 people lived in reduced circumstances. Today they drive their cars into a relatively new town and pay cash for canned goods, fresh vegetables, refrigerated meat, silex coffee makers and electric mixing machines. They live in modern, well-constructed homes on lush land they farm with American machinery on a scientific pattern to such an effect that their per-acre yield is higher than that of the average American farmer. Their children attend new schools and get as thorough an education as the sweeping, all-out drive to betterment the country can provide.

This newborn prosperity and progress is the direct development of one of the laws forged by Mexico's civil war, the keystone of its constitution, and it is known as the ejidal system.

Roughly, this system set up laws to divide immense areas of land held by individuals and to distribute them in small parcels to the peons. The land was not grabbed from its pre-revolutionary owners. It was expropriated, which means that it reverted to ownership by the Republic and was paid for at its assessed valuation plus ten percent. It was paid for in Mexican government bonds paying ten percent interest.

The mechanics of administering the basic, constitutional law were left to the individual states. In Sonorathe system varies somewhat with the individual Mexican states groups of peons working on a large farm were allowed to form what is called an ejido. Farmers belonging to an ejido are called ejidatarios. After forming an ejido, the members submit a petition to the government asking that the land they are farming be sub-divided and allotted to heads of families. This ejidal land cannot be sold. It is the property of the state, not the individual. It can, and does, pass from father to son.

With the ejido formed and the land allotted, life goes on in much the same way as it does on any American modern and successful Grange or Farmer's Cooperative.

One of the most productive farming areas in Mexico is the Yaqui-Mayo region in Sonora. New dam now under construction will make area twice as large, will make it second largest irrigated farm area in world. Wheat, rice and flax are main crops. Tomatoes produced are sent to the states.

del Comisariado Ejidal. All of these are elected to govern by the ejidatarios and can be ousted by a three-quarters vote. The ejido operates pretty much along the same line as any small farming community with the single exception of the Comite de Vigilancia. Members of this committee, ejidatarios all, keep track of the amount of work done by their compadres. Should it happen that one does not carry his share of the burden, it is only just that he should be deprived of the benefit of holding land within the ejido. This unhappy state of affairs has arisen only twice in all of the ejidos forming the bulk of the Yaqui-Mayo area. Each ejidatario farms his allotted eight hectares (20 acres) quietly and efficiently, helps his neighbors when called upon, attends meetings regularly, owns a home, usually a car, several shares in the mechanical monsters which do his farming, has five or six children, eats exceptionally well and goes to either the Protestant or the Catholic church, as his individual fancy dictates. His clothes, while not from Bond Street, are both clean and adequate, he understands the rudiments of sanitation, a great deal about modern methods of growing rice, wheat, corn and tomatoes, and as much about baseball, which he calls besbol, as any American boy. He believes firmly in trade unions, may belong to several, but he has only one political party. This is, understandably enough, the Revolutionary Party.

Alongalmost parallel courses the Yaqui and Mayo rivers drain parts of the rugged Sierra Madre. Between Over half-million acres have been put in cultivation in Yaqui-Mayo area.

The Banco Nacional de Credito Ejidal loans money for fences, ditches, seed, machinery and for the other ordinary accoutrements of farming. A commission of farmers and administrators meets periodically to regulate the ejido. Under the watchful eye of the national Secretario de Agriculturo this Comision Agraria Mixta says who shall and who shall not obtain grants of ejidal land. It also lays down scientific schemes for getting the most out of the land and determines which crops are to be grown, based on an anticipated market. After harvest, it also splits the farm melon, divides profits among the individual ejidatarios.

Within the ejido (which can be translated to read "community") a Secretario and Tesorero as well as the Comite de Vigilancia are presided over by El Presidente the two rivers and inland from the gulf is an immense expense of rich, fertile table-land. About 500,000 acres of this land is now in cultivation-it exports some 2,000 railroad cars of tomatoes into the United States annuallyand with the completion of the Oviachic dam above Ciudad Obregon more than a million virgin acres will have been brought under the caterpillar-drawn plows of today's Mexican farmers. The crops, in order of acres planted, are rice, wheat, flax, sesame, corn, tomatoes, alfalfa and beans. Beans, contrary to popular opinion, are little grown. Ten percent of all land is planted to corn and exported to southern Mexico by government edict. Rice and wheat crops are rotated one year of rice, two of wheat and back to riceto give substance to the soil, strength to its produce. With Water both plentiful and cheap and rice at a premium, the silt-load after a rice year revivifies the land and produces two bumper wheat crops. Under the present exceptional and ingenious irrigation system which services Ciudad Obregon and its twin city Navojoa, further south, the ejidatario of the Yaqui-Mayo pays only thirty cents for a thousand cubic meters of water. This is the cheapest water in the Republic and, quite likely, the cheapest water from a system of dams and canals in the world.

Early this year the contract was let and preliminary earth moving already had begun on the Oviachic dam. Scheduled for completion by 1950, Oviachic will stem the Rio Yaqui above Ciudad Obregon. In addition to supplying four billion cubic meters of water for an additional half-million acres, it will also produce cheap hydro electric power for the growing factories of Sonora.

Water from Oviachic will be taken through the present Yaqui farmlands by means of the Canal Principal and will empty into the Mayo river. The Mayo river will then be used as a subsidiary canal to supply water for the land surrounding Navojoa.

If all this conjures up a picture contrary to the Romantic Old Mexico of other years, it is because of the tremendous strides taken in this Sonoran area in recent years. The region of the Rios Yaqui-Mayo is not typical. It is an outstanding example, a symbol and a signpost of what all Mexicans fervently hope will happen to the now their encouraging the taking of a fair profit does not mean that the Mexicans are laying their country open to another spree of exploitation. Says Aleman: "History shows that foreign capital fares best when working side by side in the same enterprises with Mexican capital." American investments will be safeguarded in Mexico, but only so long as Americans take the same risks as the Mexicans. The comparatively fantastic development in the region of the Rios Yaqui-Mayo, if nothing more, is Mexico's answer to America's questioning whether a Mexican can ever be anything other than a serape-wrapped figure dozing under an immense sombrero against a cactus. This region has not been financed with American dollars. Every peso so far invested in the Mexican People living below Oviachic has been a Mexican peso. The results have been encouraging.

A drive today through Ciudad Obregon-through the wide streets lined with strong houses, into the adjoining valley, along the tremendous canals, through flats irrigated, productive farms tilled by happy, industrious people with tractors, trucks and combines shows a startling change over what was Mexico. And it shows something else.

There are fewer peons in Sonora-but many more farmers, mechanics and builders. There is less poverty. More schools. Ciudad Obregon is an indication of what can and will be done in Mexico as the country develops.

submerged bulk of Mexico within the next few decades. The Oviachic program, already off to a leaping head start, will be first completed of a series of similar projects dear to the heart of President Miguel Aleman and blueprinted along an American TVA pattern. It will be augmented and duplicated (by means of a hearty infusion of U. S. dollars) in the states of Sinaloa, Oaxaca and Vera Cruz. The ambitious $656,000,000 program Aleman has mapped out for other Mexican states is laid on a foundation of anticipated U. S. capital. Aleman, and all thinking Mexicans, want private American capital to help and to take a profit. Mexican laws are being re-stated to encourage just that, and to attempt to obliviate the memory of expropriation an ugly symbol that still sticks hard in the craw of many a clipped American business man. But Adequate water and favorable weather, plus rich soil, are factors in big rice yield in Yaqui-Μαγο district in Sonora. Government teaches most modern farming methods to farmers.