Southeastern Arizona's Borderlands
Agua Prieta, Mexico and Douglas, Arizona Show Melding of Cultures
© Kat Long
The border region in Southeast Arizona blends the industrial and cultural histories of Mexico and the United States into a vibrant picture of Spanish-American life.
Southeastern Arizona’s border with Mexico is the site of an inherent melding of American, Mexican, and Native American cultures exclusive to this frontier. In the U.S., illegal immigration is a hot topic in the 2008 presidential race, and Congress is wrestling with solutions to the waves of Mexican citizens who cross the border illegally, ranging from an amnesty program and the benefits of U.S. citizenship to building a fence along the entire 2,000-mile-long border. However, in Douglas, Arizona, and in its neighbor across the border, Agua Prieta, this ideological battle seems very far away.
Douglas, a former mining town (like most towns in Southeastern Arizona’s Cochise County) with about 17,000 residents, was founded in 1901, before Arizona became a state. A few relics remain, amidst the vast natural beauty of the surrounding desert, from its heyday as the copper smelting center for the nearby mines in Bisbee, Arizona.
The Gadsden Hotel, built in 1907, is a grand example of the wealth that flowed through this region at the turn of the century: it features a solid white marble staircase flanked by four marble columns in its vast lobby and a luminous stained-glass mural by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Of course, the hotel’s plumbing is solid copper. It’s said to be haunted.
Though the region’s mines closed in the 1970s and 1980s, one landmark in the area is a massive, flat-topped mountain of black slag, the material left over from when the copper has been extracted from the ore.
Today, Douglas is a sun-drenched hamlet popular with shoppers from across the border (there’s a massive Wal-Mart, in whose parking lot one will see license plates from Arizona, New Mexico, and Sonora, Mexico). Visitors can enjoy Mexican-American lunch at Yogi’s Café, a friendly eatery popular with locals.
Visitors who expect a forbidding barrier of barbed wire and steel fence at the border crossing will be pleasantly surprised. It is recommended that visitors park their vehicles at one of the nearby public lots in Douglas and cross to Mexico on foot. You’ll be able to pass through the gate without a hassle—and crossing back is similarly simple on foot, because one avoids the car searches that the U.S. border patrol conducts on each vehicle. Just don’t forget your passport: as of January 1, 2008, U.S. citizens are required to carry one when crossing the border.
In many ways, Agua Prieta looks like the set of an old Hollywood western. Many buildings appear to date from the early part of the twentieth century, and some are painted in colorful pastel hues. There are numerous stores selling cowboy boots and Western gear, joyerias (gift shops), and street-level saloons advertising Tecate beer, all surrounding a sun-baked town square with a gazebo and tiered fountains.
The town’s stunning white adobe church sits on the western edge of the square, and on Sundays it appears well-attended. Most of the stores and restaurants are closed on Sundays, so visitors should choose a weekday for the optimal visit to Mexico.
Agua Prieta was the site of a historic treaty signing during the Mexican Revolution, but there are few visible signs of conscious historic preservation. Instead, history seems organically preserved all around the town, from the Norteno music wafting out of the many hot-dog carts on the street or in the colorfully tiled walkways. (Visitors should take care not to twist their ankles in a sidewalk pothole).
The proximity of Douglas and Agua Prieta allows visitors to immediately compare the contrasting cultures on display—but one will likely come away from a visit seeing more similarities than differences.
Related articles:
An Intro to Southeastern Arizona
Southeast Arizona's Natural Beauty
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