The decade of the 60's

Industrialization and Development

The same as in Sonora and Mexico, the sixties are a watershed for Nogales. Today, we understand those years as the period of a general restructuration: economic, social, religious, political, etc. It is an epoc that although it uses transnational tools, it has, through these years increased the participation of the border region within the national Mexican dimension.

However, when we speak about that period, and because it is so recent in time, it is necessary to talk only about the large historical processes, and not so much about the daily affairs. This is so because many of the actors that participated during these years are still members within our community.

If we would specify names, we would fall either in one of two opposites: the possibility that their mention would be interpreted as a personal apology, or a personal attack, and therefore this text would be seen as a partial analysis toward this or that subject, this or that person. However, there is nothing more divorced from the mind of this author.

Strategies of Development

Within the economic dimension, the growing border dependence fromthe United States economic offer, the incapacity of the import substitution model to raise the standard of living, the exhaustion of the tourism model, etc., trend to convert the border region of Mexico into a potential source of national tension, not only internal but also external since the 60's.

That is why the Mexican federal government, after having directed it's attention toward the modernization of the Sonoran valleys between the 1940's and 1955, now will implement a project to modernize the border, as well as incorporate it more within the national dimension.

The original project of Ernesto Felix that we have already talked about: a better urban image for the border, will be complemented by combating emigration with more offer of local work, as well as the improvement of the local lifestyle.

And even more, within the strategic dimension, we could think that the Mexican federal government is betting that, by offering more work in the border itself, will provoque the emigration to this region, and therefore aggravate the international tensions, forcing the United States to contribute to incorporate us more within Mexico by isolating us.

The first stage in this process will consist in the installation of industrial infrastructure that will offer better work than that existant until then. The second will consist in the improvement of the standard of living through the offer of both, national and international goods in the Mexican side of the border.

However, the answer of the local economic powers hasn't been uniform along the border regions of Mexico with the US, nor within Sonoran border regions themselves. Some sectors accept the change, while some others that fear losing their hegemony or want to acquire it, express themselves against this project, and as a consequence the poltical crisis of 1967 comes to the surface.

And even later, in many regions, among them in Nogales itself which is a special center of attention of this federal project, a local offer both of work and of better products isn't built, so the federal government decides to import them.

In the sixties, the federal government begins the process of border development, and Nogales is economically restructured towards the assembly of foreign goods through the Twin Plants concept. This first step will be followed by an improved offer of goods, through new shopping centers, first from Sonoran, then from regional investors. They will offer articles that previously were out of reach to whoever didn't have a border crossing card to acquire them in the US. Therefore, the immediate consequence is the cutting of the sonoran economic dependence from Nogales, Arizona.

However, the rapid border industrialization process also brought with it an enormous human influx to the border, which associated advantages and disadvantages.

On one side, the raising of the standard of living, the need of more social infrastructure: educational, habitational, of services, etc. But also an aggravation of the border tension as well as the degradation of the local natural environment, etc.

And within the visible, the drug trade, who previously had manifested itself only underground, now will break the established economic order of the forbidden trade, and will flourish as a new local, ostensible, manifest economic regime, accompanied by criminality as well as of social violence. This as well as a new subculture that corrodes the sonoran rural roots: the usage of cowboy boots, of the pick up truck, of the language terms derived from the drug commerce: an operation, a movement, etc.

The reason for this restructuring of the drug trade happens because, differently from the previous liquor commerce who was at the least ignored by the other economic and social sectors of Nogales, or even that of drugs themselves who, although subterraneous, had been controlled avoiding their open manifestation. However, now, with the increase of population, the drug trade will be undertaken by anybody willing to risk his or her life or freedom, ignoring at the same time the local economic powers to the degree that even society itself will not know the main actors of this trade.

This, of course, will impede the control of this trade by the previous economic monopolistic structure, and therefore will desintegrate the established economic order, while at the same time the struggles attempting to control this trade will end up in violence.

And even later, the main sucsessful actors in this trade will acquire local as well as regional respectability.