On a scorching August day in 1918, a man walking across the border inadvertently sparked a full-fledged battle between the citizens of Nogales, Sonora, and soldiers of the U.S. Army stationed in Nogales, Arizona. The residents of the two towns had lived side by side for decades, but tensions sparked by revolution, world war, and the presence of soldiers on the boundary resulted in an explosion of gunfire across the boundary. The aftermath of the fight was a fence dividing the two halves of Nogales, a scar that has never quite healed down the middle of the line city.
The twin cities of Nogales are nestled in a broad canyon that forms a natural crossing point between the United States and Mexico. Millennia before either of the two nations came to be, people traveled through this gap in the rugged hills and mountains of the Borderlands. In 1882, the first railroad to cross the border between the US and Mexico was constructed through this valley, and a town sprang up and took its name from the groves of walnut trees (Juglans major) that clung to the banks of the fickle but fecund Santa Cruz River. Settlers began to fill in the land along the tracks, establishing a thriving community that straddled the porous boundary and attracted immigrants from around the world, eager to find their fortune in the cross-border trade that thrived in the town built so close that you could walk into a building in Mexico and walk out in the United States. Since then, the towns have grown, and the buildings right along the border have been knocked down to make way for an easement that runs east to west across the cities. The walnuts have been cut down to make way for the rapidly expanding population of Nogales, Sonora swelled by workers in factories called maquiladoras that have sprung up in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement to produce electronics, textiles, auto parts, and chemicals for the international market. Capitalizing on proximity to the U.S., the maquiladoras feed on the abundance of cheap labor provided by migrants from southern Mexico or Central America. Today, the creek is funneled into underground tunnels polluted by factory runoff and haunted by an underclass of homeless children, overloaded drug mules, and desperate migrants trekking across the borderline. Divided by a 30-foot fence mantled in curling strands of razor wire, the towns are fighting to retain and celebrate the international culture that defines them and build a community that can weather the political and economic storms buffeting the Borderlands.
Despite occasional bandit raids and Indigenous uprisings, relations were mostly good between the two cities that began to be called Ambos or Both Nogales. In 1910, a series of violent revolutions erupted across Mexico, with much of the fighting taking place near the International Boundary. In Nogales and other towns, the violence spilled across the border, straining relations between Mexicans and Americans.
Alex La Pierre Co-founder of Borderlandia
The Mexican Revolution gets started in 1910, and that really kind of sets the stage for the the battles of Nogales, the three different battles that were fought here. Different factions vying for control. And really the fact that Nogales was a border community was very strategic in that the revolutionaries needed a source to get arms and ammunition. Just like today the easiest place to get arms and ammunition for Mexico is the United States. And so that's why some of the first battles of the Mexican Revolution were specifically in border towns like Nogales.Many Nogalenses lived daily life on both sides of the boundary line. But things became harder during the revolution. The U.S. entered the world war raging in Europe, and news of the Zimmermann Telegram, an attempt by Germany to bring Mexico into the war against the United States in return for control of land lost in the 1800s, sparked paranoid suspicions of German spies and Mexican guerrillas infiltrating U.S from Sonora. The soldiers and inspectors stationed along the border became more and more aggressive toward Nogalenses who regularly crossed the line to work, shop, and visit family in southern Arizona. The revolution in Mexico had already caused two battles to rage in Nogales, with bullets occasionally flying into walls and windows on the U.S. side. The first temporary fence that went up along International Avenue in Nogales was put there by the Mexican government to stymie the flow of guns and money from the United States to rebellious armies and Indigenous resistance groups. Instability along the border and the increasing presence of soldiers, who were outsiders to this otherwise tight-knit community, contributed to rising animosity. Newly arrived soldiers complained that the Nogalenses would heckle them on the street. Locals claimed that the soldiers harassed them at the border and engaged in drinking, gambling, and prostitution. In 1915, tensions escalated, and a full-blown race riot, sparked by a barroom brawl, shook Ambos Nogales.
Sigrid Maitrejean 2nd Generation Nogales Resident
Yeah, the famous Battle of Nogales. I have to tell you, I’m not one of the proponents of making that a big deal. But anyway, it was an accident and it was really not Nogales, Sonora residents against Nogales, Arizona residents. It was Nogales, Sonora residents against the U.S. Army. I’m sure you know it was an accidental beginning, and it went on because nobody knew how to stop it. Basically, until somebody got out there and waved a flag and said enough! Nobody gained anything. I mean, they had loss of life. It was one of those accidents which is bound to happen when you have a border. Somebody walks across the border and they don’t understand how to respond and it triggers a response. You know, you have guns, you shoot them. So I’ve always, I’ve always been unhappy about the emphasis on that, because I think it was such an aberration in how we’ve gotten along on the border. And it was never people against people. It was Mexicans who were pretty annoyed against the American army.For two hours International Avenue turned into a homegrown World War 1 battlefield. Soldiers and armed civilians poured in from both sides. Nogales, Sonora mayor Felix Penaloza was near the border when he heard the firing. He was an experienced frontier civil servant, and he knew immediately that an incident on the line had gotten out of hand. Two Nogalenses had already been killed by American guards in recent months and it was only a matter of time before the tension broke like a monsoon thunderclap over the town. Mayor Penaloza grabbed a white cloth and wrapped it around his cane as he made his way northeast along a narrow street. He shouted for the armed Nogalenses to put their guns down, to stop the fighting. He begged and pleaded with citizens as they ran blindly towards the gunshots, past reasoning with. Most of the town’s professional troops were away fighting rebels near the little hamlet of Sasabe, and the situation was beyond his control. Still he made his way toward International Avenue, the makeshift white flag waving above his head as bullets carved pockmarks in the walls around him. Somewhere across the line, an American rifleman saw the old man, adjusted his aim, and squeezed the trigger. Felix Penaloza had led binational parades, and met U.S. officials on the exact spot where he now lay bleeding on the hard-packed dirt. Citizens came running from cover and the Mayor was carried into a pharmacy where he soon died from his wounds.
Richard Jackson Former Nogales Resident
The way the family ended up in Nogales was my Tata, Lucius Franklin Jackson, was in the Army. The 25th Infantry that he was assigned with got moved to Nogales to protect the border from the civil war going on at the time with Pancho Villa. The troops of course, being stationed here, would mingle with the citizens, and my grandfather met my grandmother at the border. After his tour ended in the Army he had married and had a family and decided to make roots in Nogales.As the fighting intensified, machine guns went up on balconies, and civilians on both sides grabbed weapons and made their way to the border. The famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry charged up the heights east of town to drive out snipers firing down onto American positions. The cavalryman spurred their sweating horses but were driven back by withering fire from the hill. One witness to the battle recalled seeing a little old lady sitting on her porch knitting, pull out a pistol from beneath her handiwork to snap off a few shots at a group of passing soldiers before continuing to watch and work.
Allyn Watkins A Witness to the Battle of Ambos Nogales
Well, there was one quite interesting development when the bullets started flying and the troops from Camp Little climbed up on some of the more prominent structures along Crawford Street there, and one of them was the Wise House which was a two story brick house of some prominence, and they placed a couple of machine guns on the roof with Joe Wise’s approval. It seems that Mr. Wise had a completely stocked basement of pre-Volstead Act liquor. So as the battle heated up, Joe started reinforcing their courage with a bottle of his good bonded whiskey as they sent the cases of ammunition up. The result after the truce flags had been waved from prominent locations like the Custom House and the hills around Nogales, Sonora, we found out that we had no lights on the top of Titcomb Hill. Nor were our telephones working. I don’t know how effective the firepower was on the Mexicans, but they sure as heck cleaned out our light wires and telephone wires.Officials on both sides sought channels through which to negotiate a ceasefire, but after the American commander on the scene threatened to march into Mexico and burn the city to the ground, a white flag went up over the customs house of Nogales, Sonora. The border was closed for the remainder of the day, and throughout the evening, snipers occasionally sent bullets across the line. At least 4 Americans died, with 28 more wounded. Historical accounts on the number of Mexican casualties vary greatly from 12 to 129 killed, with as many as 300 wounded. But soon, like the sudden passing of a thunderstorm, things returned to normal along the line. The fight had been almost a sort of protest, though a deadly one. The citizens of Nogales, Sonora were pushing back against abuses from U.S. troops who didn’t understand or respect the close personal ties that connected the two border communities. Once the shooting stopped, people began passing back and forth, visiting their families and returning to the stores they had frequented for years. The battle was a sudden and violent break, but not enough to destroy the longstanding relationships that have kept the people of Ambos Nogales together for nearly 150 years.
Among the soldiers stationed at Camp Little in Nogales were the men of the 25th Infantry, a unit of African-American soldiers with white officers. As their tours came to an end, some of these men decided to make Nogales their home rather than return to the Jim-Crow era south. These former soldiers joined the already diverse cultural milieu of the burgeoning border community.
Donna Jackson Houston Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Association
My family, the Jackson family, was born and raised in Nogales. This house right here. The last house on top of E Street, and right next door, is Mexico. What is that? 10 yards away. I just love this. It is so close. Growing up having that connection to another country. I embrace that. When we were growing up coming out here, it was a simple chain link fence like this didn't really keep any one out per se. But there wasn't, as far as I know, any problems with that. Not everyone always crossed at the official border crossing. They came over and this huge wall that was not there when we were growing up.Donna Jackson Houston Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Association
Without getting into politics. This is something that I support the decision, of course. It’s sad to see that they feel it’s a necessity to have it there. But, it’s very different when, as a child, you just look out, you can see your Mexican neighbors, interact with them, and now you have this huge monstrosity. But, that is life, progression, so. There you have it.As long as there has been a border, there have been people seeking to cross it surreptitiously. Apache raiders, Yaqui freedom fighters, American rustlers, and Mexican revolutionaries have all tried their hands at crossing the line. Some of the earliest men to patrol the border were mounted guards assigned to keep out Chinese immigrants hoping to cross the border from Mexico. Chinese immigrants, banned from citizenship in the U.S. since 1892 and driven out of Mexico during the revolution, cut holes through the fence, and started venturing even further out into the deserts and canyons to evade detection, finding work in the agricultural fields and construction sites of the Southwest. In 1943, when Asian immigrants became eligible for U.S. citizenship, workers from elsewhere took their place on nighttime border runs.
International Avenue has historically been a bustling center of economic and cultural exchange, but gradually it is becoming vacant, trash blowing down the potholed road in the shadow of a 30-foot wall decorated with spools of concertina wire and scraps of clothing caught on the blades blowing like flags in the wind. The devaluation of the peso starting in the 1980’s combined with zealous border security policy, and the rise of digital markets, has wreaked havoc on the small businesses that line Morley Avenue. Major decisions that can destroy livelihoods and tear apart the fabric of family relations are made in the far-off capitals of Washington D.C. and Mexico City without input from the people they will impact the most.
Border militarization is a double-edged sword. Politicians invoke the cause of national security and lament the impacts of undocumented migrants on the culture and economy of the United States to garner support for the construction of walls and the movement of troops and federal agents to the border. They use the exceptions to laws and treaties provided for by the REAL ID Act passed after the September 11th attacks, to push extralegal construction projects. They justify these actions by claiming that they will stem the tide of illicit border crossings, protect Americans, and bolster American businesses and workers. Yet these measures often have just the opposite impact on border communities. Cities like the two Nogales are built on the free movement of people and goods across the boundary. Cross-border commerce and relationships are woven into the fabric that threaded these communities into existence in the 1880s, with the railroad acting as the needle. In 1882, when trains from the two countries met one another at the recently constructed railroad depot, it inaugurated a new era in the relationship between the two nations, which only 40 years before had been at war over this land.
Sigrid Maitrejean 2nd Generation Nogales Resident
There’s a psychologist who works with individuals, and he has a theory that children brought up in two cultures develop a third, and I had a chance to talk with him at some length because I was one of his guinea pigs. And it is absolutely true. You are neither one, and you are both. And I think that's what happens in Nogales. Our identity is structured around this area, not north, not Green Valley, not Tucson, and not really south, not Hermosillo. So you have a place where, up until very recently, cross-border communication was the rule of the day.Multiculturalism and ethnic diversity is the lifeblood of these communities. They are human tidepools where people, ideas, and products flow into, out of, and between Mexico and the United States, diffusing throughout both nations. It is this factor that makes borders across the world appealing to some, who thrive in this diverse milieu, and terrifying to others who view borderlands as a potential site of infection that threatens their concept of racial or cultural purity. For those that actually live on the border, this isn’t an abstract debate playing out on their phone screens, but a lived reality, so familiar as to be almost taken for granted.
Evan Kory Community Leader and Musician
Growing up, it’s all we knew, so we didn’t think of it as something special, but, as I got older, I realized that it was very much a binational way of life, and you kind of have one foot in the U.S. and one in Mexico at all times. And for me, it was always very entertaining, I guess, because there’s just such a mix of cultures here. I love Nogales. I grew up here and left for about 15 years, lived in New York City for a long time and came back and realized that it’s a unique place. There’s nothing like it.Evan Kory Community Leader and Musician
I remember when it was kind of a chain link fence at the beginning. I would say the most intense change recently was the concertina wire that was added. In 2018, it was midterm election day. Our bridal store is like 20 feet from the wall. And I was inside kind of watching what was happening because they were dropping off all these rolls of, of wire. And I didn’t, it didn't occur to me what it was for even, because nobody knew. Everyone was caught by surprise when it happened. But the National Guard came in and unloaded all the wire and then once it was all unloaded they started to put it on the fence. And no one had any idea it was gonna happen. It was very, very shocking and it didn’t feel like we were a part of that decision and we’re the ones who live here, you know? Yeah, that still is a very sad moment, I think, in our town’s history, and the whole border region too, because I think that although now people don't think about it too much, it’s still there, and it’s sort of become part of the fabric of the way we live.Alex La Pierre Co-founder of Borderlandia
I think the wall is the very last step in failed diplomacy. That’s what, for me, the wall represents. So I think that if we were really interested in preventing all that, we would look at it in a holistic way. How can we improve security in Central America? How can we improve the quality of jobs in Central America to where people won't feel motivated to come all the way here to the US. But that’s kind of the hard question that nobody really wants to answer. You know, why do Americans have the biggest appetite for illicit drugs in the whole world? Those are the hard questions that need to be answered in order for a more dignified border is really how I see it.Sigrid Maitrejean 2nd Generation Nogales Resident
I think the wall has happened. I think the wall and an attitude, which we never had before. I think there are people who prefer to think of the United States as an island and not, you know, that no outside influence is going to affect us on this island.Alex La Pierre Co-founder of Borderlandia
I think fear is the big ghost, the fear that something’s gonna happen to them if they go over to the Mexican side. I think a lot of people, they feel almost like in, in a Columbus-like way, the world ends here at the border and they’ve limited it in their mind. And I think that’s an absolute tragedy and why our organization exists, is that we wanna show the good news, the 98% good news. And of all the border towns, Nogales has a reputation of being one of the safest ones. It’s really a unique border town and it started as one community. So I think that’s showing that side of Nogales, the fact that, you know, civil society is living here, spending their everyday lives just like normal people. I think that for people to come and see for themselves is such an important thing rather than letting the media decide for them.As ever-tightening border security, economic uncertainty, and global pandemics slow down the cross-border traffic that has driven the economy of Nogales, a new generation of Nogalenses are working to revitalize the sister cities through art that celebrates the binational heritage of their community. Art galleries and music venues are sprouting up in shuttered department stores, and murals are appearing on the sides of the old brick and stone buildings that line Morley Avenue.
Sigrid Maitrejean 2nd Generation Nogales Resident
I think one of the things thats happening in Nogales which is a very good thing, and it’s happening by a lot of younger people, thank God. And that is an attempt to look at the culture of Nogales as an asset. Because that’s not going to change, essentially. There will always be jazz, and folklórico dances, and painters, and that kind of thing, I think, is a way that you can build a core which brings people here, and then the rest kind of falls.La Linea is among a number of new spaces, all within blocks of the border, where visitors from both sides of the line are encouraged to come together to experience art and discuss the issues that impact their communities. City-sponsored events ranging from Day of the Dead to the Annual Nogales Buffalo Soldiers Day, celebrate the distinctive binational culture of the town. These events are not a panacea for the troubles facing Nogales, but they have provided outlets for creative expression while diversifying the downtown economy and helping to stem the flight of young people from the city.
Against the backdrop of this burgeoning art scene comes news of a potential expansion of the DeConcini Port of Entry a block over from Morley Avenue. This facility is struggling to handle the 7 million vehicles and 2.5 million pedestrians it sees in a year, and plans call for an expanded footprint that will swallow up more of downtown. This is the tension that has always tugged at Nogales. Being a border city has been a blessing and a curse, imbuing the town with its distinctive culture and stripping it away in the name of security. The border breathed life into this valley between steep hills and then filled the air with the fumes of maquiladoras, and thousands of cars waiting to pass through heavily guarded checkpoints.
Before the battle, other than temporary fences, only a border monument numbered 122 marked the spot where the two nations met. But afterwards, a simple chain link fence went up along International Avenue to direct people to “Legal Points of Entry.” Since 1918 the wall has continued to evolve in Ambos Nogales. As the years passed, the fence slowly sprouted lampposts, all the better to illuminate illicit passages. When prohibition created demand for alcohol in the U.S. and guns and money in Mexico, the fence started to snake further out towards the hills around town. Two seedling trees grew to maturity between the old guard posts, and larger checkpoints went up a block west to handle the new influx of automobile traffic between the countries. A new taller fence was built and topped with barbed wire, and the two trees growing between the guard towers were cut down for better visual control. As Nogales became the largest site of cross border commerce in Arizona, the Mariposa Port of Entry was built further west, and a concerted effort to divert extra legal border crossings led the government to install a new steel bollard fence. The World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001, brought a massive influx of new recruits into the revamped Customs and Border Protection, while semi trucks idled for hours under new inspection protocols. Fewer people came to the old Morley Avenue crossing. Updated guard posts were built, but the buildings on either side have remained the same. Older now, and with more wear, barely visible over the security cameras and razor wire. Tunnels were built into the Nogales sewer systems and ultralights flown north over nearby border ranches carrying drugs for the Cartels. People came by foot, bicycle, and truck to cross the rugged hills west of town, and the wall continued to stretch out, snaking toward the canyons of the Atascosa Highlands.