COMMON GROUND
hug each other, or holding up a newborn baby for their relatives on the other side to meet, she said, “women will frequently cry.”
ON THE ARIZONA SIDE
Driving south the 60 miles from Tucson, where the closest commercial airport is, the highway rises thousands of feet as the desert scrublands of the lower Sonoran desert give way to hilly terrain ringed by the Santa Rita, San Cayetano and Tumacacori mountains.
The region nurtures some of the best bird-watching in North America and an abundance of wildlife, such as javelinas, rattlesnakes and hawks. There are many activities in the region that can be paired with a visit to the two Nogaleses, including hunting for deer and mountain lion; fishing at Peña Blanca Lake; wine tasting and hiking in Patagonia and Sonoita; and golfing in Tubac, Kino Springs or Rio Rico.
A worthwhile stop is the artists’ colony of Tubac, where you can learn about the Spaniards who first explored the region at the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park and nearby Tumacacori National Historical Park, as well as hike or ride a horse along the same trail that Juan Bautista de Anza traveled by foot with 240 women, men and children on his 1,200-mile journey to establish the first nonindigenous settlement at San Francisco Bay.
But in my view, as a lifelong student of the border, the cultural treasure is Nogales itself. Here, the kind of tourism you’re doing changes, and you train your eye and ear to catch things you wouldn’t see or hear in other parts of the country. In Nogales, I heard perfectly bilingual speakers mix Spanish and English more as an artful form of expression than a linguistic deficiency (“le pide a la señorita que nos traiga unsautéed spinach?”).
Almost everything is bilingual and international. Twice, I assumed that individuals with fair skin and Anglo last names were white, only to learn they had at least one Mexican parent. I met Mexicans who had dual citizenship and owned homes on both sides of the border, and white residents who spoke excellent Spanish. The Paul Bond Boots shop that has made the traditional custom boots of classic Western films is staffed by Mexican craftsmen.
“I sit here every day and I marvel at it. I totally do,” said Nils Urman, the executive director of the Nogales Community Development Corp. A native of Germany, he married into a local family in the late 1970s. “I think it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve been here 38 years.”
And there’s more diversity in the city than American and Mexican, he said. “This community’s got French, it’s got Irish in it, it’s got Greek in it, and they’re on both sides of the border.”
Economically, Nogales today depends on the logistics and transportation services industry that supports maquiladorasin Sonora and on the import of produce, which makes up half the Mexican vegetables and fruits consumed by Americans.
It also relies heavily on Mexican consumers — Nogales, Sonora, has 450,000 residents to its 20,000 — and those shoppers are coming over less and less. Urman said annual pedestrian crossings into Nogales, Ariz.,