Nogales The Gateway

If it weren't for the thin wire mesh fence that separates the border city of Nogales, Ariz., from its cheek-by-jowl neighhor, Nogales, Sonora, you couldn't possibly tell where the U.S.A. leaves off and Mexico begins.

For there is such an intermingling of Yankee living and Latin living here where two nations meet that it would take far more than a fence to sort out one from the other. Little wonder that nobody ever thought it worth the effort to give the two cities different names. And, in fact, they are lumped together in the local colloquialism. "Ambos Nogales," they're called-meaning "both" Nogales.

Let's say you're looking for a chance to get a "quickie" glimpse of Mexico-not a full-dress tour, just a peek and then move on. You cruise 65 miles down U. S. Highway 89 from Tucson, park your car on the American side and walk through a gate in the wire mesh fence. You enter the customs station.

"Citizenship?" says the government functionary at the gate.

"U. S.," you reply. That's the extent of the red tape, and there you are an international traveler doing it the easy way.

You could drive across the line, of course, and see Nogales. Sonora, from your car window. But then you miss what you went after a close-up of Pan-American life and of the international goulash produced by the juxtaposition of American vitality and Mexican manana at these border twin cities.

Americans living on this side of the line do business on the other side. Mexicans living over there have jobs over here. "Good morning, Rafael," says the neighborly customs guard to the international jobholder trudging through the gate each morning from the country where he lives to the country where he works. "Buenos dias, señor.' American tourists spend their money in Nogales, Sonora. and Mexican ladies cross the border every day or so to do their shopping in the American stores.

Theaters in Nogales, Ariz., show Mexican films, and theaters in Nogales, Sonora, beguile the movie-goers' pesos with interminable double features straight from Hollywood. (Showing today at the Teatro Obregon: Ginny Simms in "Trampas de Amor." with Martha O'Driscoll and Alan Curtis. "Fina comedia musical realizada felizmente con un reparto que Ud. nunca olvidará!") On the American side the newspapers pay close attention to developments in Mexican politics. On the Mexican side the press follows the fortunes of our Congress almost as intently as the latest political intelligences from Mexico City.

Tradespeople living in either Nogales speak both languages-English and Spanish. Being bilingual is more essential to their business than a ledger and a cash register. And it's not enough for a hotel on the American side to inscribe "In" on one of its front doors and "Out" on the other. The inscriptions must read, "In-Entrada" and "OutSalida." Similarly, stores on the Mexican side welcome trade with signs that say, "Abierto, Páse Ud.; Open, Come In."

In fact, it would seem hardly necessary to have an international fence there at all. But one supposes that a certain minimum deference has to be paid to the nationalistic amenities, even amongst the free-wheeling, easy-going countries of North America.

The fence, by the way, doesn't run exactly along the border. It's two or three feet this side of it. You can cross the fence, stand with your back to it and still be in the United States. Or, to cite a more practical application, a fugitive from U. S. justice can scale the fence one step just ahead of the law. snag his pants shinnying down the other side and still be hauled back without precipitating an international incident.

The fact that the line separating the two cities is at the same time the line separating two nations has provided this region with a sprightly collection of border memorabilia.

Item: The seventh hole of the Nogales, Ariz., golf course is situated only 25 yards from the boundary. A pitch shot with a little too much oomph behind it is liable as not to land in Mexico. Golfers on the Arizona side like to amuse themselves speculating on the implications of it. Are they liable to get into trouble with the Mexican government for shipping rub-ber into the country illegally? And should they apply to Washington for an import license to bring it back?

Item: An old settler by the name of John Brickwood built a saloon many years ago, before the final boundary survey had been made. When the survey finally was completed, it was discovered that the saloon lay almost exactly astraddle the border. The bar was half inside Mexico and half inside the United States. Shady characters incurring the disfavor of the law needed only to slither from the American end of the bar to the Mexican end (or vice versa) when an officer hove into view.

The twin cities constitute a very busy port of entry which is of growing importance in commercial intercourse between the two countries-a gateway, in fact, to the whole west coast of Mexico. This embraces a vast and comparatively unex-ploited agricultural region stretching southward beyond Guay-mas (the "Riviera of Mexico") to Culiacan and Mazatlan, at the lower end of the Gulf of California. It includes the swiftly-growing capital city of Sonora, Hermosillo, a modern Mexican metropolis connected with Nogales by paved highway.

Trade between the United States and this west coast empire of Mexico has increased measurably since the war, and among its chief beneficiaries have been the twin cities of Nogales. Merchandise, produce and livestock pour in both directions through the port of entry, moving by truck and rail-road. (Here the American railroad, Southern Pacific, joins with its Mexican counterpart, Sud Pacifico de Mexico.) Because of its strategic commercial importance, Nogales, Sonora, lacks some of the characteristic somnolence of towns deeper in the interior. But the distinctive flavor of Mexico is still there.

Gordo, or at least his Nogales cousin, sleeps standing up in the doorway of a bar, his bushy moustaches riffling gently with each snore, his sombrero pulled low over his eyes. Over there is the public square, with its tortilla stand and its benches, where those unable to afford a movie can sit and listen to the sound track blaring from loudspeakers in front of the nearby theater. And up the steep hill rising just beyond the international fence shuffle a ragged Mexican boy and his phlegmatic burro loaded with firewood. Here is a city and village all in one.

There ahead, on Calle Elias, lies the Cavern, favorite

The Cavern in Nogales, Sonora, is a famous landmark, whose genial owner, Demetrios Kyriakis, has earned renown as a host.

haven of American gourmets and a melting pot among melting pots. For this renowned restaurant is run by a Greek immigrant with Mexican citizenship and offers fine American cuisine. The proprietor's name is-or was Jimmy Kerson. Everybody still calls him Jimmy, although, in a moment of nationalistic ardor during World War II (Greece had just been attacked by Albania), he changed it to Demetrios P. Kyriakis, his Greek name. Life has its little perplexities for a man born under one flag, living under another and in the shadow of a third. For instance, although Jimmy's home is in the Mexican Nogales. he sends his children to school in the American Nogales. It happens on occasion that they return home puzzled, and demand, "Papa, when people ask us what we are, Mexican or American, what should we tell them?" Jimmy gives this one a lot of thought. Then-"You tell 'em," he says, "that you're Greek." The Cavern is just that a great vault dug into the hillside. Long ago it was a gold mine. Later it served-not too effectively as a jail. Geronimo, the wily Apache renegade, broke out of there in the 1880's, with considerably less effort than was required of him to escape from other durance viles in which the white men tried to detain him from time to time. Bars in Nogales, Sonora, never close, except once every six years on the occasion of Mexico's presidential election. Then, because the keys have long since been thrown away. it's often necessary for the proprietor to station a man at the door to tell the trade, "No drinks today." Mexican holidays are observed as scrupulously and enthusiastically on the American side of the border as on the Mexican side. Nogales, Ariz., shopkeepers may let Washington's birthday pass unheeded. But comes Cinco de Mayo, or some other patriotic Mexican celebration, and business closes down for the day while the Yankee celebrants join their Mexican neighbors over a nice cold beer. Viva la fiesta! Viva Mexico! The American tourist shopper, prowling through the Mexican city in search of something to take home to his sister's family, will discover that the Mexicans have an extraordinary approach to competitive merchandising. Instead of scattering their curio shops around the town so as to snag random American dollars wherever the tourist might choose to wander, they huddle in tight little clusters, like sheep in a storm.

Here in the middle of a block is a small court ringed on three sides with lines of booths selling Mexican knick-knacks. If, at one booth, you can't find just the kind of silver-andturquoise earrings you're looking for, you'll find them at the next. The tourist shopper saves a lot of shoe leather that way.

Knick-knacks, incidentally, are about the only commodities you can buy more cheaply on the Mexican side than on the American side. The current exchange rate is nearly nine pesos to the dollar. When American traveler ventures farther into Mexico, this operates to his advantage. But here at the border the dollar is the almighty determinant, and values in Nogales, Sonora, approximate those in Nogales, Ariz.

Uncle Sam lets you bring $100 worth of merchandise back duty-free, plus one gallon of liquor.

While Nogales, Sonora, is the larger of the two cities and the main tourist attraction of the area, Nogales, Ariz., is considerably more than just the town you go through to get across the border.

Within its orbit lie a number of fine dude ranches to entice the saddle-and-chuck-dinner set. Its Rancho Grande, anchored atop a hill near the city limits, with an incomparable view of the valley in which nestle the Ambos Nogales, is one of Arizona's better hostelries. And the shades of the old pioneers, the empire builders and the Spanish treasure-seekers lie darkly across this southern Arizona landscape.

A scant 25 miles east of Nogales is the point at which the first civilized white man entered what is now the western United States. He was Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar, who later guided Coronado's expedition of 300 conquistadores and 500 Indians seeking the seven fabled cities of Cibola, where the walls were said to be encrusted with gems and the streets paved with gold. The seven cities, as it unhappily de-veloped, were only seven Indian villages, with refuse for gems and dust for gold.

Five miles from Nogales is the old Pete Kitchen ranch. Kitchen, dead-eye peer of Indian fighters, once stood in the doorway and picked off, man by man, a group of Apaches spying on him from a rock 400 yards away.

Nineteen miles north of Nogales is Tumacacori Mission, now a national monument. The great Spanish padre, Eusebio Francisco Kino, built it in 1692 as a link in a chain of missions stretching northward and westward into California. Here Father Kino and his fellow priests toiled to convert the savage Indians of the desert country, and the missions served also as rest stations for venturesome travelers making their perilous way through the Southwestern wilderness.

The old Spanish garrison of Tubac is located not far from Tumacacori. Capt. Juan Bautista de Anza organized an expedition here which colonized California and founded the city of San Francisco. Firmly embedded in the editorial policy of the Nogales (Ariz.) Herald and its veteran publisher, H. R. Sisk, is a plan demanding that Tubac be made a state park and officially designated as the "Plymouth Rock of the West,' and maybe some day it will.

Tubac and Tumacacori were stops on the old stage run from Tucson to Nogales. It was the stage which Pete Kitchen, with a self-satisfied chuckle over his own phrase-making. liked to call the "Tucson-Tubac-Tumacacori-To Hell."

Nogales itself-the American half of the twins, that is -was founded by an itinerant peddler named Jacob Isaacson. It was about 1875 that he decided to settle in the mountain pass where the two Nogales' now stand-it was a natural trading point between Sonora and Arizona. Isaacson built an adobe shack on the site of the modern day Southern Pacific depot. A settlement sprang up and became known as Isaacson. Later the name was changed to Nogales, which is the Spanish word for walnuts. (There was a cool and quiet walnut grove where the high school athletic field now is located.) Nogales, Ariz., is the county seat of Santa Cruz County.

Arizona's smallest, but in many ways most favored, county. Nogales is located in a natural mountain pass at an elevation of approximately 3,800 feet, with truly ideal weather, suffering neither extremes in summer or winter, and with an average rainfall of 16.07 inches. Nogales is joined with Tucson on the north by U. S. 89, completely modernized highway, and with Bisbee to the east by an all-weather, all-paved state road which passes through the beautiful green grass country of Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.

Nogales is served by the Southern Pacific Railroad, Sud Pacifico de Mexico, Citizens Auto Stages to Tucson, "Transportes del Norte" to Guaymas, Frontier Airlines, and to the South, Lineas Aereas Mexicanas and Aeronaves de Mexico.

Although Sonora once was known as "the cradle of Mexican revolutions," and this region has endured more than its share of conflict, the Sisters Nogales are a couple of peaceful ladies now. There hasn't been a revolution or a border incident in these parts since 1929. That was the year of the short-lived Manso-Topete rebellion against the government of President Calles.

Nogales, Ariz., came out of that unpleasantness unharmed, but it hasn't always been so lucky. In 1913 the American city was peppered with far-ranging bullets when the rebel forces of Francisco I. Madero, defying the Diaz government, besieged Nogales, Sonora. Three years later the redoubtable Pancho Villa took over the Mexican town and made a pass at the American Nogales. National guardsmen had to persuade him to stay in his own backyard.

If you're interested in a "quickie" glimpse of our neighbor to the south, though, you can come ahead without fear of wandering into the middle of a revolution or an inter-city squabble. People down Nogales way find no time these days for such diversions-they're far too busy enjoying a boom induced by increasing international trade and tourist traffic.

The wire mesh fence is still there, but it has a swinging gate. The sign on it reads, "Abierto, Páse Ud." Walk on into Mexico, señor.