Surging Sonora

BY: Marvin Alisky,RAY MANLEY

Like its cultivated jumping beans Sonora is not standing still. anging Sonora By Marvin Alisky

In n addition to its own sunny climate and natural beauty, Arizona also lures visitors from across the nation and from overseas because of the charm of its neighbor, the Mexican state of Sonora. Picturesque but changing, culturally traditional but economically modern what's Sonora really like? After years of visiting every Sonoran municipio (geographically the equivalent of a U. S. county but governmentally a municipal entity) both as a news correspondent and as a university researcher, I felt a portrait of this state could be fashioned from current statistics, a glimpse at history, and a resumé of personal observations. But such a word mosaic flattens into a profile, not a full-faced portrait.

It almost seems that Sonora can be fully captured verbally only with alliteration surging state, meticu-lously Mexican milieu or by reciting contrasts: tomatoes and tourists, Yaquis and Yankees, fishing and farming. Perhaps its cultivation of jumping beans symbolizes Sonora's attitude. Sonorans can't stand still. Ever since Spaniards first collided with Pima and Mayo Indians near the Mayo River in 1533, Sonorans have been heard from.

lously Mexican milieu or by reciting contrasts: tomatoes and tourists, Yaquis and Yankees, fishing and farming. Perhaps its cultivation of jumping beans symbolizes Sonora's attitude. Sonorans can't stand still. Ever since Spaniards first collided with Pima and Mayo Indians near the Mayo River in 1533, Sonorans have been heard from.

In 1539, Father Marcos de Niza moved northward from Sonora through Arizona in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. The next year, Captain Francisco Coronado followed the same route. But conquest of the Indians and Spanish settlements didn't come for another century.

As it had for the Indians, Northern Sonora and Southern Arizona Pimería Alta or Upper Pimaland geographically and culturally joined as a unit for Spaniards and later for Mexicans, to be divided only with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 sepa-

Sonora CAMERA CLASSICS

"IMPRESSIVE JUAREZ-VICTORY STATUES AT NOGALES, SONORA" BY RAY MANLEY. A five-year program of beautification and modernization of Nogales, Sonora, is now underway by the Mexican Federal Government. These huge statues by the famous sculptor Alfredo Just are located at the border community. One statue is dedicated to the patriot Benito Juarez, the other to victory in the revolution. 4x5 Calumet camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/30th sec.; 90mm Super Angulon lens; April; Weston Meter 250; ASA rating 50.

"THE BUSTLING CITY OF NOGALES" BY JOSEF MUENCH. View of Nogales, Sonora, from the Arizona side. This typical Mexican border town is separated from Nogales, Arizona, by the International Boundary fence and happens to have the larger population and boasts the biggest building, the Marcos de Niza Hotel. A brisk tourist traffic keeps the port of entry open twenty-four hours a day. Colorful markets, bullfights and curio shops create a typical Mexican atmosphere. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 18 at 1/10th sec.; 81/4" Zeiss Tessar lens; March; sunny day.

"NOGALES' FAMOUS CAVERNA CAFE" BY RAY MANLEY. A "must" for visitors to Nogales is the colorful Caverna Cafe. The huge cave in which it is housed was once used as a jail. The Caverna Cafe is famous for its splendid cuisine, especially seafood, which comes fresh from Guaymas daily. 4x5 Linhof color camera; Ektachrome Daylight; f.16 at 1/25th sec.; 90mm Super Angulon lens; ASA rating 32.

"ONE OF THE MANY CURIO STORES IN NOGALES" BY RAY MANLEY. The many curio stores in Nogales, Sonora, are important tourist attractions. Nogales being a free port, customers can purchase perfumes, clothing, arts and handicrafts from all over the world at reduced prices. 4x5 Linhof color camera; Ektachrome Daylight; f. 18; open flash; 90mm Super Angulon lens; November; ASA rating 32.

"VIEW OF MAGDALENA, SONORA" BY JOSEF MUENCH. View of town of Magdalena, Sonora, situated about an hour's drive south of Nogales. This town, surrounded by semi-arid desert mountains, is located in beautiful and lush appearing Magdalena River valley. The towers of the city hall and Mission San Francisco Xavier are conspicuous landmarks, while in the foreground wheat is being harvested. The immortal Father Kino used Magdalena, where he died March 6, 1711, as the base for his explorations of Northern Sonora and what is now Southern Arizona. The Fiesta of San Francisco is held in Magdalena early in October and attracts thousands of visitors. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 16 at 1/50th sec.; 81/4" Zeiss Tessar lens; May; sunny day.

"OLD AND NEW MISSIONS AT COCÓSPERA" BY RAY MANLEY. The mission at Cocóspera is located about twenty-five miles east of Imuris on the road to Cananea. The older mission, now a colorful and protected ruin, was founded by Father Kino. 4x5 Linhof color camera; Ektachrome; f. 1 1 at 1/50th sec.; April; hazy late morning sun; Weston Meter 250; ASA rating 50.

"MISSION AT MAGDALENA" BY RAY MANLEY. This is a closeup of the Mission San Francisco Xavier at Magdalena, Sonora. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.18 at 1/50th sec.; 135mm Symmar lens; March; bright sun; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 50.

"HISTORIC KINO MISSION AT CABORCA" BY RAY MANLEY. This Kino-founded mission, located one mile south of Caborca, is one of the most colorful of the Kino missions in Northern Sonora. It is still used for religious services. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 16 at 1/50th sec.; 135mm Symmar lens; March; late afternoon, bright sun; Weston Meter 350; ASA rating 50.

CENTER PANEL

"THE COLORFUL HARBOR AT GUAYMAS" BY RAY MANLEY. This is a view of the harbor and the waterfront of Guaymas, Sonora's most important shipping center. 5x7 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.18 at 1/60th sec.; 210mm Schneider Symmar lens; February; bright morning sun; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 50.

"UNIVERSITY OF SONORA AT HERMOSILLO" BY RAY MANLEY. Shown here is one of the impressive buildings of the University of Sonora at Hermosillo. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 16 at 1/50th sec.; 135mm Symmar lens; March; bright morning; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 50.

"CATHEDRAL AT HERMOSILLO" BY RAY MANLEY. Located in the central plaza is the Cathedral at Hermosillo located across the plaza from the State Capitol. 4x5 color view camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/25th sec.; 90mm wide angle Angulon lens; March; Weston Meter 250; ASA rating 50.

"HERMOSILLO'S BEAUTIFUL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY" BY JOSEF MUENCH. Photograph is of the State Library at Hermosillo. This modern and imposing building of Mexican architecture with Mission and Moorish influence, houses the museum, library and a huge auditorium where plays and concerts are given. Fronting the building is a beautifully kept park. Mexico Highway 15 cuts through the middle of it. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; May; sunny day.

"VIEW OF HERMOSILLO, SONORA'S CAPITAL CITY" BY JOSEF MUENCH. Situated in the midst of the Sonoran Desert, Hermosillo, capital city of the state, is best seen from Bell Mountain, a rocky point in the center of the city. On the left is the Governor's Palace with twin-towered cathedral behind it, while on the right, the modern Bank of Mexico building. Stretching to the west are the fertile orchards and wheat fields, made possible by the Rodríguez Dam, impounding the waters of Sonora River. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.29 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; May; sunny day.

"RESORT AREA OF GUAYMAS" BY RAY MANLEY. To the left is the luxurious resort hotel Playa de Cortez. Fronting the bay are Miramar Beach Resort, a trailer park and private homes. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome E3; f.16 at 1/60th sec.; 135mm Symmar lens; bright morning sun; Weston Meter 400; ASA rating 64.

"SONORA'S OBREGÓN DAM" BY JOSEF MUENCH. The Obregón Dam on the Yaqui River, reached over a 35-mile good gravel road, north from Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. This mile-long, rock-filled dam impounds the waters of the Yaqui River used for irrigation of some 300,000 acres in the lower Yaqui Valley. Built by the Mexican Government, it has brought wealth to the former desert lands surrounding Ciudad Obregón. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 16 at 1/25th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; May; slight overcast.

"VIEW OF MOCÚZARI DAM ON THE MAYO RIVER" BY JOSEF MUENCH. This photograph shows Mocúzari Dam on the Mayo River, upstream from Navojoa, Sonora. Reached by turning north off the paved road leading to historic Alamos over eleven miles of good graded road. Waters of the Mayo River, coming from high up in the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains, are impounded by this rock-fill dam, bringing much needed water to the tableland bordering the Gulf of California in Southern Sonora. Because of its length, only part of it is shown in this view. In the foreground, a giant cactus Pachycereus pectin aboriginum is shown, with its strange, bristly yellow fruit. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/50th sec.; 51/4" Schneider Xenar lens; May; sunny but overcast.

OPPOSITE PAGE "MODERN WHEAT HARVEST IN VALLEY OF SONORA RIVER" BY JOSEF MUENCH. Harvesting wheat in Sonora. Taken along the paved road leading west from Hermosillo to Kino Bay. Here, three modern combines are seen rolling down a field in unison to harvest the golden grain in this former barren desert land. The State of Sonora raises about 90% of wheat consumed in Mexico. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/50th sec.; 6" Xenar lens; May; sunny day.

"IRRIGATION CANAL IN YAQUI VALLEY" BY JOSEF MUENCH. Irrigation Canal and Yaqui River Valley, thirty-five miles north of Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. This view, taken from the top of the Obregón Dam, shows the concrete lined irrigation canal bringing water to the parched desert lands in southern Sonora. On the right are the modern housing facilities for the operating personnel of the dam while in the background the almost lush appearing bottom of the Yaqui River Valley. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome; f. 11 at 1/50th sec.

The Old and the New Contrasts Symbolize Mexico's Tradition and Progress Program

Separating Arizona from Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 setting the present border. A Jesuit, Father Eusebio Kino, began founding settlements in Sonora in 1687 and by 1700 had completed founding the Mission San Xavier del Bac near Tucson, the most impressive monument Spain left in the Southwest.

Father Kino had been a Sonoran by adoption. A native Sonoran, Juan Bautista de Anza, born in Fronteras in 1735, set forth from Tubac, Arizona, in 1775, on a march across Southern California and up to the bay of San Francisco. His intrepid handful of Sonorans completed the longest overland migration in North American history before the settlement of Oregon, like tiny puppets on a Broadway-sized stage, a corporal's guard of soldiers walking across the vast Sonora-ArizonaCalifornia desert.

Battles of 1910-1920 but also the social reforms of the past fifty years. This strictly non-Communist phenomenon has nurtured both private and public enterprise throughout the republic, with Sonora contributing some of the Revolution's key leaders.

Young Alvaro Obregón was the mayor of Huatabampo, Sonora, when in January, 1912, he received a telegram from the governor of the state asking all city officials to recruit citizen soldiers to fight for reforms, to redress the inequities of centuries.

Rounding up volunteers in Southern Sonora, Obregón soon found himself a colonel, whose battalions were sustaining law and order along the border from Naco to Nogales, and guarding the port of Guaymas. In 1915, the acting President of Mexico, Venustiano Carranza, made General Obregón his righthand man. As President

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marvin Alisky's lifelong involvement with Mexico began during his boyhood in Texas when his parents would spend vacations in Monterrey. Fluent in Spanish, he holds the Ph.D. degree in Latin American political science from the University of Texas, where he also received his B.Α. and his master's degree in journalism.

As a news correspondent, he has filed stories from most of the Latin American republics and Spain for the NBC network, the Christian Science Monitor, Copley News Service, and various magazines ranging from the popular to the scholarly.

Chairman of the Department of Mass Communications at Arizona State University, he teaches both journalism and Latin American government.

The ASU professor, active in the Inter-American Press Association, has lectured at universities in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and was the first Smith-Mundt visiting professor in Central America. He founded the School of Journalism at the University of Nicaragua and helped found Latin America's first Graduate School of Communications in Quito, Ecuador.

A former visiting fellow at Princeton University, he has co-authored two books, authored another, and has published more than sixty magazine articles dealing with Latin America.

Colonel De Anza governed all of Arizona and Sonora as commandant of the military post of Tubac, twenty miles north of the present-day U.S.-Mexican border.

Buried in his native soil in Arizpe in 1788, De Anza was honored by a delegation of Californians in 1963, who brought a plaque from San Francisco for his grave at the Arizpe church.

Sonora also had been tied to Sinaloa, the Mexican state to its south, during certain colonial periods but in 1823 regained its own identity and the following year became a state in the Mexican federal republic. After another reunion with Sinaloa, it separated as a state permanently in 1830.

Throughout the 19th Century, Mexico suffered several military revolts followed by the “peace” imposed by the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911. Then came the Revolution, always written with a capital “R” by Mexicans to mean not only the military of the Republic himself during 1920-24, Obregón initiated land and labor reforms to institutionalize the Revolution.

His son, Alvaro Obregón Jr., carried on the Revolutionary leader's zeal for progress as governor of Sonora during 1955-1961.

Three other governors of Sonora also exerted leadership as presidents of Mexico: Plutarco Elías Calles, governor during 1917-1919 and president 1924-1928; Adolfo de la Huerta, governor 1916-1917 and acting president of the Republic in 1920; and Abelardo L. Rodríguez, governor 1943-49 and president 1932-34Note that two Sonorans in a row led the nation through its formative years of the Revolution: Obregón during 1920-1924 and Calles 1924-1928. Like Obregón, Calles and Rodríguez also had helped Mexico win its internal integrity as Revolutionary generals. And former president and former governor Rodríguez also became one of Mexico's top businessmen in the 1950's through his national chain of motion picture theatres, telephone companies, and related businesses.

On the screens of those theatres for more than a decade, Mexico's most beautiful and leading actress, María Félix, another Sonoran, has symbolized glamour.

Politically, Sonoran women have been preeminent in Mexican feminine circles. Inasmuch as Mexican women won the right to vote as recently as 1952, only six states have elected women to the lower house of the Federal Congress. In 1961, Sonora did so, electing Alicia Arellano Tapia to a three-year term. In 1964, Sonora became the first state to send a woman to the Federal Senate, again choosing Dr. Arellano Tapia.

Sonorans also exert national leadership in business and in education. The late Ignacio Soto loomed as one of the top financiers of the Republic. In 1963, Cesar Gándara, who with his brother Raúl operates the Gándara Motel in Hermosillo and the Playa de Cortes hotel in Guaymas, served as president of the Mexican Hotel Association. In 1964, Dr. Moisés Canale, president of the University of Sonora, also is president of the Mexican Association of Universities.

Like its human resources, Sonora's physical and economic data are certainly impressive: second largest of the twenty-nine Mexican states in land area, wheat crops which make it the republic's bread basket, dynamic cotton farming on irrigated land which formerly languished as desert.

Principal Sonoran crops include cotton, wheat, beans, corn, citrus fruits, rice, tomatoes, soybeans, alfalfa, watermelons, potatoes, chick peas, linseed, lettuce, barley, and sorghum. Cotton and wheat alone account

Irrigation and Water Conservation Projects Bring New Prosperity

for ninety per cent of the cash value of Sonora's crops. In volume, Sonora grows ninety per cent of Mexico's wheat.

With more than two million head of cattle, Sonora exports only 194,000 head annually to the United States and 90,000 to other Mexican states. Thus Sonorora's consumption of beef remains high, even with a seafood center at Guaymas and a fishing industry along its coastline facing the Gulf of California.

From its early history, Sonora has been a mining region, with copper, lead, zinc, graphite, and gold creating mining camps in the Sierra Madre Occidental, the western Mexican branch of our Rocky Mountains. At the turn of the century, mining constituted ninety per cent of Sonoran exports, but today less than one third. Also in terms of the Sonoran labor force, as the state's economy diversified, the percentage of Sonorans who are miners has dwindled.

Thus, like Arizona, Sonora thrives on the "C" resources: cotton, copper, citrus, cattle, and climate, the latter insuring a large wintertime tourist trade. North of the border, another "C" stands for computers, signifying the large electronics industry in the Phoenix area. No similar electronics complex can be found in the Sonoran capital of Hermosillo; south of the border, the other "C" stands for camarón, or the shrimp industry at Guaymas.

Sonoran industry has grown out of its agricultural needs: cotton gins, insecticide plants, flour mills, meat packing plants, frozen shrimp processing plants, and coffee processing concerns.

Export-import facilities at the port of Guaymas and at the border city of Nogales are undergoing a multimillion-dollar renovation under the Mexican federal government's Border Development Program.

Tourists crossing the border from Douglas, Arizona, to Agua Prieta, cannot drive very far southward into Mexico. The northeastern corner of Sonora is still five years away from being connected by paved highway with the main arteries to the south. But the Nacozari Railroad does lure the train buff who wants a trip to the relatively isolated town of Nacozari, seventy-five miles south of the border. Each Tuesday and Saturday morn-ing, the Nacozari train leaves Agua Prieta, returning to the border the next day. Midway between the two towns lies Fronteras, birthplace of famed explorer Juan de Anza. Nacozari itself claims an historical footnote as site of the Mexican equivalent of the Casey Jones heroism. Jesús García, a locomotive engineer on the Nacozari line, while in his cab November 7, 1907, spotted smoke pouring from a frieght car laden with dynamite. García highballed the train to a safe distance from the then thriving mining town just before the explosion killed him, saving hundreds of lives.

Almost the same distance south of Douglas by gravel road, Lake Angostura attracts fishermen all year around, though the best months are April through June and Sep-tember through November. The road from DouglasAgua Prieta branches into two roads at the lake, one running to La Playa, the campsite on the northern shore,and the other branch to the southern shore campsite, each with cabins and kitchen. The $2.50 nightly charge includes clean bedding and towels. No restaurant operates, so fishermen bring their own food, except for the optimists who know how well the Mexican federal gov ernment has stocked the lake.

New Recreational Areas Have Been Created for the Public's Use

Almost midway between the two north-south roads Agua Prieta to Lake Angostura and the federal highway from Nogales down to Hermosillo Cananea nestles in the mountains, only twenty-five miles south of the border. But no direct road connects this cattle and mining center to Nogales. One must drive southward from Nogales on Federal Highway 15 for forty miles, then eastward on a gravel road for another forty miles.

But the indirect route doesn't mean that Cananea isn't engaged in self improvement. Like many other Sonoran cities and towns, Cananea has a Junta de Mejoramiento Moral, Cívico, y Material or Civic, Moral and Material Betterment Board. Two thousand such boards have grown throughout Mexico in recent decades. A combination businessmanrancher-farmer-city councilman-educator group, a Civic Betterment Board serves as the fund-raising unofficial arm of the Mexican municipal council. Mexican municipalities find potential tax revenues substantially preempted by federal and state governments. Grassroots governments suffer from fiscal anemia, but the JMMCyM gives financial transfusions. Under the able leadership of Roberto Elzy Torres, the Cananea Board in 1962-63 bought the city two street-cleaning machines, raised part of the funds to complete a kindergarten, donated to the Volunteer Firemen's Fund, paid for part of the construction of a secondary school, and bought uniforms for a city basketball team. During 1963-64, the Cananea Board, working with the municipal council, has been raising funds for a vocational high school.

In Caborca and Benjamín Hill, Civic Boards financed the expansion of potable water supplies. Even the capital city of Hermosillo, whose 100,000 population gives it resources not available to other Sonoran cities, needed its Civic Board to help finance arc-vapor street lighting and expansion of city parks.

Sonora's 70,500 square miles contain seventy-two municipios, whose annual budgets total only four per cent of the state government's budget. If it weren't for the Civic Betterment Boards, many Sonoran towns would still lack street lights and public parks.

Not that all Sonoran towns are dominated by modern business and governmental techniques. Vicam typifies eight Indian villages in the Yaqui Valley. Civil officials exist but the real spokesmen for the Yaquis are tribal elders better versed in the rituals of the deer and coyote dances than municipal or commercial regulations. Vicam's biggest annual activity lasts for a week preceding Easter Sunday. Indians enliven traditional Christian dramas of Spain with their own pagan rituals. Judases in bird and animal masks pound a convictlike lock step ankle-deep in dust, while other dancers representing Roman soldiers brandish toy swords. Gourds and rattles allow dozens of spectators to participate.

Sonora is Instant Beauty - A

At Belem, the Vicam ritual differs only with the addition of painted dolls on sticks, conjuring the illusion of a parade of puppets.

In 1909, some Yaquis, persecuted by the Díaz dictatorship, fled northward to Tucson and to Guadalupe, a town just southeast of Phoenix, where today as United States citizens they have become trilingual in English, Spanish and Yaqui. But in some of the Sonora mountain country, the most isolated Yaquis speak only haltingly in Spanish if at all. As radios shrunk in size and price thanks to transistors, younger Yaquis began listening to music and city voices from the powerful transmitters in Hermosillo, leaving the number of truly isolated Sonorans relatively few in number.

Dirt and gravel roads connect the Yaqui villages with Federal Highway 15 at junctures twenty and thirty miles south of the railroad center at Empalme. Another forty miles south of these junctures lies Ciudad Obregón, itself a Yaqui village named Cajeme until mestizo (Indian-Spanish mixed bloods or "average Mexicans") settlers changed it into a city now totaling 80,000.

Just a few years ago, Ciudad Obregón lacked paved streets and even enough filling stations to take care of its growing number of automobiles. Today it enjoys the boom of the Yaqui and Mayo Valleys, backed by irrigation projects.

The Obregón dam on the Yaqui River, the Angostura on the Bavispe, and the Mocúzari on the Mayo River in a decade boosted the wheat crops of these Southern Sonora valleys 400 per cent.

Six other dams also have given the state irrigated farming prosperity: the Abelardo L. Rodríguez dam on the Sonora River, the Cuauhtémoc on the Altar River, the Haciendita on the San Marcial Stream, the Rebeico on the Rebeico Stream, the Morelos on the Colorado River south of Yuma at the border, and the new Novillo on the Yaqui.

On March 12, 1964, the last work on the El Novillo ended and Fernando Hiriat, assistant director of the Federal Electrical Power Commission, opened the hydroelectric plant to add 90,000 kilowatts of electricity to the energy going to smaller Sonoran agricultural communities.

Thanks to similar power boosts at the Rodriguez dam, Hermosillo's modern office buildings and two dozen American-style motels never suffer dimming or blackouts in their neon signs.

With its floodlights at night or its tall pillars gleaming in the sunshine, the State Museum in Hermosillo attracts many tourists. One of its features, a mummified Yécora man (predating the Seri and Pima Indians by hundreds of years), highlights similar exhibits. The block-square building also houses the official library of the state and that of the University of Sonora, whose modern campus fronts onto the museum.

Founded in 1942, the state university opened with one small building and 375 students. Twenty-two years later, its more than 3,000 students occupy two dozen big buildings. The university includes a School of Law and Social Sciences, a School of Business Administration, a School of Chemical and Physical Sciences (including pharmacy), an Academy of Music and Fine Arts, an Academy of Physical Education, and a School of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.

The University of Sonora was among the first of the Mexican state universities to build a full-scale agriculture school. Until recent years, most of the other state universities limited themselves to academic and industrial subjects, leaving agricultural training and experimentation to three national colleges and a handful of rural vocational schools. But the Sonora example has now been emulated on a dozen different provincial campuses throughout Mexico. station tests strains of wheat and cotton for farmers from throughout the state. Also complementing the main university at Hermosillo is the Institute of Technology at Obregón.

Picture Wherever You Look

The university eventually hopes to add marine biology to its laboratories. At present, to Sonoran and visitor alike, Puerto Peñasco and Guaymas mean swimming and fishing, though the commercial fishing aspects center in Mexican cooperative companies.

Tourist sportsmen can pursue deep sea marine life ranging from marlin to a manta ray. Inland, hunters find plenty of deer, turkey, and even boar.

Another type of visitor hunts for buried treasure near Alamos. Though he will never likely find legendary silver and gold bars, such an explorer will encounter a glimpse of the colonial past.

Alamos was one of the earliest Spanish settlements in northwest Mexico. Development of nearby gold and silver deposits led to a population of 30,000 by 1781. Within a hundred years the mines began to yield less and less and by 1909 Alamos had dwindled to a tiny village of plastered adobe houses and empty mansions whose pillars joined graceful Moorish arches into arcades, with delicate iron grillwork guarding the windows.Alamos had become a ghost town, dreaming of its yesteryears of glory. Retired Americans and a few Mexican artists began to rediscover the town a couple of decades ago. A few proud heirs of the silver families' lost fortunes had kept some of the mansions in good repair, even to the polished grand pianos which had been freighted from Paris by ship and mule train during the boom of the last century. But other old homes, deserted and with the sun glaring through collapsed roofs, begged for restoration.

Some retired Americans bought these abandoned houses for only $1,000 each in the 1950's and began to make repairs, cut down weeds, and replace cobble-stones in patio walks. Revived, Alamos then acquired two modern motels, and now draws tourists every day in the year. At the city of Navojoa, forty miles north of the Sonora-Sinaloa state line, a side road leads eastward thirty miles to Alamos.

Encouraging tourism to Alamos and to every other town in the state is an agency of the executive branch of the state government, the Office of Tourism in Hermosillo, one block north of the post office and center of the city.

Another key office of the state government promotes industrial development, and still another, land development.

In 1961 when Luis Encinas was elected governor for a six-year term ending in 1967, Sonora offered another example of leadership which is respected throughout Mexico. Young Encinas had started out to be an attorney when leprosy banished him into years of isolation and what seemed likely to be a premature grave. Physicians told him that in some such cases will power can conquer the disease, that if one suffered long enough recovery was possible. Encinas self-control during his thirties led to his recovery and his election to his state's highest office in his early forties.

Like the other twenty-eight Mexican states, Sonora has a unicameral legislature of nine members the size in the other states ranges from seven to thirty-two and a state judiciary. But the three branches of state government combined, backing up the federal government's policies of social reform and expansion of the economy, have not been able to solve all the big problems.

In 1959, in 1962, and again in 1963, impoverished peasants invaded large ranches and farms and squatted, to demonstrate their economic plight in the otherwise prosperous Yaqui and Mayo Valleys. Sonora, like the remainder of Mexico, suffers from a too rapidly growing population in terms of economic growth.

Mexico's population increases 3.5 per cent each year more than one million Mexicans will be added to the thirty-eight million by the end of 1964 making this republic the fastest growing nation on earth. And within the republic, Sonora's annual population increase of two per cent threatens to raise torturous problems for public and private civic leaders in the decade to come.

In 1960, the official census listed the Sonora population at 784,000. By the end of 1964 it will climb to 924,000. Valiant governmental efforts at school construction cannot begin to contain the huge new schoolage population. Similarly, other public and private facilities are beginning to lag behind demand despite intelligent planning and the vigorous entrepreneurship of private enterprise.

Free public inoculations against contagious diseases, improved water supplies, federal social security medicare all have cut down the Sonoran death rate while the state's birth rate has soared.

Religious views of the predominant Catholic Church and cultural traditions both inhibit widespread consideration of planned parenthood. Only among a handful of intellectuals at the university can one encounter such thinking. What scant notice Sonoran leaders take of the overpopulation problem usually ends with the hope that economic expansion will solve matters.

Even the vigorously candid José Healy newspapers of Hermosillo, El Regional and El Imparcial, which constructively criticize various facets of public and private life of the state, so far have not dealt with the coming population crises either in news columns or in editorials. In general these dailies do a professional job of reflecting the activities and thinking of the state.

Ironically, its increasing population does not assure Sonora enough human resources to run its expanding industry and modern agriculture. Unskilled youngsters vastly outnumber the skilled. With an emphasis on more vocational training, Sonora leadership hopes to meet the challenge.

To the casual American tourist, Sonora means vaqueros (cowboys) punching cattle near Caborca, mariachis (folklore musicians in black jackets and narrow trousers, with broad-brimmed hats) serenading at a restaurant, or salesgirls in bright blouses and ornate skirts vending sarapes (multicolored blankets) or silver jewelry in one of the dozens of curio shops in Nogales.

To the Mexican in the other states of the republic, Sonora means industrious farmers and fishermen, the home of presidents, a cradle of the Revolution, and a funnel for southbound American visitors.

To its own leaders, Sonora means irrigation canals, cotton gins, the docks of Guaymas, and the pressure to build enough schools and low-cost houses to shelter the burgeoning population.

To its rank-and-file citizen, Sonora means whatever his position in society so orients: a boy at Kino Bay mending his fishing nets while gazing at the sunset at nearby Tiburón Island, a middle aged woman painting the outside of her tiny grocery store green on the dusty main street in Santa Ana, a physician trying to take care of too many patients in Magdalena, and a supermarket manager planning a big sale in Hermosillo.

To all of the state's sons and daughters of whatever status, the very name "Sonora" conjures the homeland. Many educated Sonorans will explain that the Indians corrupted the Spanish word "Señora" or "Lady" into "Sonora." Actually, anthropologists believe that before the coming of the Spaniards, the Opata Indians called the region "Sonotl," meaning corn, their principal crop. Either explanation gives the state's name its basic connotation of mother earth, provider of sustenance.