ADVENTURES IN MEXICO: SONORA

 Looking north toward the USA from The Republic of Mexico.

The mountain is called Picacho San Jose.  The border town of Naco, Sonora is on the other side.

  
  I found it!

  “It” is a picture looking from Mexico into the United States.  It was the fall of 1995…I pulled off Mexican Federal Highway 2 in Sonora east of the mining town of Cananea, got out of my car and took the shot…Picacho San Jose.  It’s a mountain that overlooks the border town of Naco.  The town is on the other side of the mountain from where I was standing.

  During the 1910 Revolution the revolutionaries put a cannon on that mountaintop to shell the Federales down below.  Every time they fired the thing the recoil would send the cannon down the mountain a few hundred feet.  Bunch of guys would have to run down the mountain to bring it back into firing position.

  The mayor of the Mexican side of Naco had bought a new motorcar and had it stored in a garage on the Arizona side of the border to keep it out of harm’s way.  Revolutionaries had hired a dude with a biplane to “bomb” the Federales on the Mexican side.  The bombs were leather sacks full of gunpowder and shrapnel with a long fuse.  A kid with a cigar sat in the plane’s extra seat, lit the fuse and dropped two or three of these “bombs” on Naco, Sonora.  One of the bombs was accidentally dropped on the Arizona side and hit a garage…the garage where the Mexican mayor had stored his new motorcar.

  I think of these things when I look at that picture, remember my trips south of the border…

The Pocket Translator

  I had always wanted to travel in Mexico but I didn’t know the language.

  Had I KNOWN I’d be living in The Great American Southwest in the future I would’ve taken Spanish instead of French in high school. 

  One day I saw an ad in a mail-order catalog for an electronic Spanish dictionary.  I had visions of walking through Mexico with ease, language would be no problem with my spiffy, new ELECTRONIC SPANISH DICTIONARY.

  So I sent off my $35.00 and in a week or two my electronic Spanish dictionary came in the mail.

  I had been reluctant to cross the border.  I didn’t know what I’d find over there.  I’d heard stories.

  I would listen to the radio station out of Nogales and their Saturday show of old Mariachi music from days gone by, “Sabado Ranchero” and I would think, “How could a place with such great music be dangerous?”

  So one Saturday, with my Electronic Spanish Dictionary in my pocket I walked into the small Mexican border town of Naco, Sonora.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no Mariachi band to welcome me, no street thugs running up trying to pick my pocket, no Federales grabbing me by the arm and whisking me off to prison.

  Nope.

  It was just a small Mexican town with folks going about their business.

  I walked on the main street.  There were several Farmacias where I’d heard folks would go after crossing the border to easily buy prescription drugs.  I heard talk around work that meds for migraine headaches were popular.

  It was a first landing so I just walked down the main drag taking it in.

  I walked from the border on the north side of Naco to the south edge of town where there was a bus station.  It wasn’t much more than a building put together with particle board, a wide open space that hungered for a pane of glass, a desk behind a counter where a fellow had his head on the table.

  I thought he was just resting.

  With my electronic Spanish dictionary in hand I prepared for a conversation.

  “Pardon,” I said.

  I was wrong.

  The guy didn’t have his head just resting on the tabletop. 

  Nope.

  He had been taking a nap.

  It was Siesta Time in Naco, Sonora and the bus dude told me so…loudly….sharply…and in no uncertain terms.

  I smiled and said, “Lo siento, señor.”  At least I knew how to say “sorry” in Spanish.

  Thing is Naco, Sonora really wasn’t all that much different than Naco, Arizona.  There were even bars over the windows on homes on the Mexican side just like on the American side.  It looked like break-ins were a big problem on both sides of the border.

  I put my pocket translator away.

  I had seen enough on my first foray on foot into Mexico.

  I would return to Naco a number of times over the years…to buy green coffee beans at their grocery (since that time it seems one isn’t supposed to do that anymore), buy dark rum, Bacanora (Tequila’s Sonoran distilled “friendlier cousin”) or Tequila at the liquor store there, to speak to Lupita the store’s pet javelina kept in a pen by the liquor store.

  I would also drive over into Naco to go to a seafood restaurant where 5 dollars American could buy you a plate FULL of seafood when something like that on the Arizona side would’ve cost 10 or 12 bucks.

  My mom came to visit me in Arizona in 1996 and I took her to dinner over on the Mexican side.

  Driving back she started laughing a bit.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Don’t bring me back here,” she said with a smile.

  “Why?”

  “This is so depressing to me,” said Mom.  “These people are poor.  They’re poor on the American side too.”

  “No, mom,” I said.  “They’ve got SOUL.  They’re salt-of-the-earth kind of folks.”

  “Oh I thought you’d say something like that,” said Mom.  “No dear, they’re very poor and it’s sad.”

  “They even have paved streets,” I said.  “I visited Las Palomas over to the east in Chihuahua not too long ago and the town streets are all dirt.”

  “Then they’re poorer than these people,” she said.

  “Well we’ll just have to agree to disagree, mom.”

Walking in Cananea

  The very first time I drove into Mexico it was in the company of two women from Bisbee, Arizona…Muriel* the town dance teacher and Emily* a local artist.

  Our destination was Cananea, a northern Sonora copper mining town.  I had wanted to go there ever since I arrived in southern Arizona.  The town is the subject of a song on Linda Ronstadt’s album “Canciones de mi Padre” titled “La Carcel de Cananea” (“The Cananea Jail” in English).  I was all full of an Easterner’s sense of romance with the Southwest after listening to the cassette many times.

  Seeing as Cananea was maybe 45 minutes from my house in Bisbee I thought it would make a good day trip.

  Cananea’s mining industry was expanded with American capital back in the late 1800’s.  At one point there were about 7,000 Americans living in the city at the beginning of the 20^th century.  There was once an all English newspaper and a bunch of other stuff to make Los Americanos feel at home.  Somewhere between the beginning and end of the century the American presence disappeared.

  The road trip with the two ladies was pretty uneventful.  We walked around the town, saw the famous jail…it had been converted to a pretty decent museum including a whole floor dedicated to the history of radio in Cananea.

  The city was very hilly.  We even walked up a street that I swear must’ve been at a 50 degree angle.  As we forced our way up the hill I heard a cackling laughter followed by some Spanish chatter.  I saw Emily smile.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “Look at the stupid gringos walking up the street, no car!” translated Emily.

  I brought my electronic Spanish dictionary on this trip.

  We had made our way to the town square and we needed a bathroom.  I punched the word “bathroom” into my translator and the word “tocado” came up on the screen.

  I saw a fellow sitting on a park bench.  I walked over to him.

  “Pardon, señor…Donde estan el tocado?”

  “Tocado?” he repeated, scrunching up his face.

  “Si, tocado.”

  “Tocado?” he said, furrowing his brow.

  “BAÑO!” yelled Emily across the square, “Donde estan el baño y la baña, por favor?”

  The man’s eyes lit up.

  “Si,” he said and pointed across the town square.

  Later Emily told me I had actually asked the fellow where is the dressing table or the hairstyle, depending on his translation.

  The ladies and I passed by a panaderia…a bakery…and decided to pick up some munchies there.  Then we drove on back to Bisbee where I put the pocket translator thingamaboober away until a few years later when a friend said she hoped to go to Mexico someday and I gave it to her.

  I went back to Cananea a couple of years later, part of a group that went on a chamber of commerce kind of trip. I call it that because I have no recollection of why we went to Cananea for a weekend…Me and 5 other folks associated in one way or another with where I worked.  

Gringos in Mexico, Cananea, Sonora 1998.

Yours truly on the right...

Our guide was a Mexican fellow named Hernando* who spoke fluent English.

  

  All during our tour Hernando kept talking-up what 

wasto be the highlight of the trip: Dining on "Tacos Soto." I 

reckon he thought we'd tell our friends and people would 

flock to Cananea for "The Most Unique Taco in all of 

Mexico."

  "You will have to guess the meat that is used," he would 

say.

  This frequent statement made me a little anxious. I have 

been to get-togethers and munched on things I didn't 

know a thing about to find I'd eaten something interesting, 

like that time I went to a neighborhood barbecue in 

Phoenix hosted by some folks from the Mexican state of 

Sinaloa...I found out the braided, chewy stuff I was 

chowing down on was grilled intestines.  I didn’t catch 

whether it was pig or cow, it’s okay, I didn’t have another 

bite of it.

  Hernando took us up in the mountains west of the city to 

see an observatory.  We drove into the country east of 

town to a hacienda owned by some dude who used to be 

a U.S. Ambassador under President Reagan.  There were 

exotic animals on the property…a zebra, a buffalo, a herd 

of red deer, some African antelope…all roaming over the 

hills and hollows of the hacienda’s land.

  Soon we were at "La Cabana del Tio Tom" (Uncle Tom's 

Cabin) in downtown Cananaea with Hernando presenting a

plate of tacos with flair.

  

  "Mis amigos," he announced with a wave of his hand, 

"Tacos Soto!"

  And there they were in all of their pink meat glory.

  Pink meat.

  We chowed down.

  "Guess the meat, yet?" Hernando asked enthusiastically.

  I'm chewing and thoughts are running through my head. 

It's not tripe, tripe is chewy. Pink, hmmm, could it be 

brains? Could it be…

  "Is it SPAM?" I ask Hernando.

  "Close!" he said. "Hot dogs!"

  Hernando then regaled us with the tale of a Mr. Soto 

who, long ago, showed up at the restaurant with some hot 

dogs he had bought in Arizona.  He insisted some tacos 

be whipped up with the weenees in the package. And 

thus the Taco Soto was born.

  

  No other tacos like them in all of Mexico.

  

  Who was I to question our enthusiastic host?

-30-

*Names changed….