Yaqui Country

aqui Country

If you ask almost any Sonoran about the Yaqui Valley -El Valle del Yaqui he will tell you with pride about the vast agricultural developments near Ciudad Obregon and the plans for making the area one of the most important wheat producing regions in North America. The Yaqui Valley, as the farmers and business men of Sonora think of it, is that great expanse of fertile land along the south bank of the lower Yaqui River which is playing a tremendously important part in Sonora's increasing prosperity. It is a foundation stone in the economic progress of the state.

There is also, however, a north bank of the lower Yaqui River, a north bank where agricultural progress has lagged, where no thriving city like Ciudad Obregon has risen, and which stands in almost medieval contrast with the hum and enterprise of the south bank. The north bank is still, as the south bank was a hundred years ago, the home of the Yaqui Indians. From the ruins of Pitahaya on the west to the ruins of Buena Vista on the east, it is a land of villages with crumbling churches and military garrisons, the symbols of a chaotic past and a still doubtful future.

The hand of history lies heavily on the country of the Yaquis. Its great natural beauty is studded with mementoes of the bitter Yaqui wars that shook the state of Sonora from 1825 to 1927. Weathered piles of brown adobe overgrown with drooping mesquites mark the sites of towns which gave promise of greatness little more than a generation ago. A few tall palm trees wave over the broken plaza of Torim which, before the 1910 Revolution in the days of General Lorenzo Torres, blossomed briefly as a cultural center of Sonora. Not far away stand the ruins of the hulking walls of the great prison and military headquarters from which the General proposed to subdue the Yaquis by force and turn their country into Sonora's garden spot. Now as you walk among the ruins of Torim you find hidden under the great mesquites little cane houses where live the Yaquis who have returned since peace came. On a hill where the solid grey walls of a stone granary, built about 1700 by Jesuit missionaries, still watch over the later ruins, you encounter also a military post where Mexican soldiers mount guard day and night. The Mexican Government does not yet fully trust the Yaquis. The whole north bank of the river, not only Torim, is under military occupation.

Along the western wall of mountains which one sees coming east from Guaymas into the Yaqui country, incredibly picturesque forts painted red and white with crenellated towers rise like small medieval castles. The Mexican Army built them here, after the last battle with the Yaquis in 1927, as posts to guard the important waterholes so that Yaquis could not retire into the mountains and wage guerrilla warfare. For almost a hundred miles north and south, at Peon, Tetacombiate, Bacatete, and Huichori, the fortresses are connected with a military road and telephone lines and manned by Mexican soldiers.