1926 to 1928

By April, 1926, the municipality is planning to build a new school at the barrio de Buenos Aires, while by July begins a coordinated action to have more schools. It is agreed to give to the State the Melchor Ocampo school, for the installation, there, of a State school. Meanwhile, a building will be rented at Colonia Moderna to establish there the Melchor Ocampo.

The building of the Buenos Aires school is started, and the Lelevier home, on top of the hill of Pierson St. is bought to establish there a federal grammar school. All of this to have room for the estimated 995 students that are thought will attend next September.

In central Nogales new clubs are established. These aren´t the sordid rooms dedicated to vice, but formal ballrooms. This way, the Club Azteca is opened on May 1, 1926, right next to the new building of the brewery, and the following month, the "bar and Cosmopolitan Cabaret, with an anex restaurant" also opens in the rebuilt building after the fire. It is administered by Ignacio Felix.

Nogales, Sonora, grows again during the decade after the war years. First, because of the deported workers from Arizona. Second, due to the Cristero War (1926-1929) an influx on inmigrants from central Mexico, refugees from that war. They are people that the British historian, Alan Knight has found come from Aguascalientes, Colima, Jalisco, Michoacan and parts of Durango, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas.

And precisely because of the Cristero conflict, here, in Nogales, on July 31, 1926, long lines of Catholics will attend for the last time to the sacraments at the Purisima Concepcion Church, before it is closed by the eclesiastic authorities, as an answer to the Callista persecution.

Ending the year, on December 10, Charles E. Wikl signs the contract through which the Gas Company of Nogales, S. A promises to supply electricity to the population, while on the 20th, at 3:30 PM, all Nogales witnesses, at the Plaza de la Aduana, how "Spider Man" gives an exhibition and climbs the Customs House building with his bare hands and without any security apparatus.

Trying to block the growing US cultural influence, the Councilman Fernando Priego proposes in a Council meeting, the suppression of publicity in English, and that the contracts be stipulated only in pesos. The Council approves his proposal.

On February 22, the Cerro de la Cruz school is opened with the name of Francisco I. Madero, and the following month the President is authorized to acquire a piece of land to build there the garbage dump, as well as the necessary surface to build a new school at the Colonia Moderna. At the same time, the lands on Buenos Aires destined for a new school, are given to the Board of Federal Improvements, for it to finish the school.

The new administration approves, finishing the year, the proposal of Agustin Medina, President of the Fathers and Teachers Society of the Melchor Ocampo school, that the fire siren be sounded daily at 9 PM, as a warning to the youth of Nogales that it is too late for them to be outside.

That decade of the 1920´s will also see the building of the first water sewage treatment plant of Ambos Nogales, located in Nogales, Az thanks to the fact that the drainage flows naturally North. Also, those years will witness that terrible drought between 1921 and 1923, in which enormous quantities of cattle will die on both sides of the border.

But the decade hasn´t finished yet, and after Obregon´s reelection to the Presidency of Mexico on July 1, 1928, and his murder 17 days later, the resignation of Presidente Calles and the naming of Emilio Portes Gil as Interim President until new elections are carried on, the following June, Nogales will again gain national prominence. It is the defining moment in the next step in the Mexican Revolution: That of it´s ideological strengthening. The change from the fight with weapons to the fight of ideas. It is the moment when the postrevolutionary socioeconomic model has to be established.

On November 10, Jose Vasconcelos crosses the border into Nogales, Sonora, coming back from his self imposed exile, and he gives a speech at the Teatro Royal, located North from the Plaza 13 de Julio. His speech will mark the start of his campaign for the Presidency of Mexico. In it, he speaks about the need of reaching that necessary stage in the revolution: "The revolution needs, at last, to reach the spirits" he will say here, in Nogales.

With this speech, he starts a campaign that will be called "civilist" because he tries to end the military regimes. However, his call is still premature, as a few months later the last uprising will interrupt it.