Statue to be built in honor of founder of San Luis R.C.
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — Carlos G. Calles, the man credited with founding San Luis Rio Colorado more than a century ago, will be honored with a statue city officials say will be ready for unveiling the middle of next year.
Measuring nearly 10 feet in height, the statue dedicated to Calles, a captain in Mexican army who established a military and farming settlement at what is today the city, will be located in the brick-covered plaza in Benito Juarez Park, in the city’s downtown.
Balderrama Escultores, a Sonora firm, is overseeing the project estimated to cost about 380,000 pesos, or about $20,000.
The statue, slated to be completed in May, will depict Calles standing and dressed, facing the north side of the plaza, where another bust is located in honor of celebrated Mexican of the 19th Century, President Benito Juarez.
The statue is the first of its kind in San Luis Rio Colorado dedicated Calles. The project was praised recently as an overdue “act of justice” by his grandson, Carlos Silva Calles.
“I wish to thank Mayor Santos Gonzales on behalf of my family for this gesture of honor and justice that few previous mayors recognized,” said Silva Calles, a former Sonora state lawmaker from San Luis Rio Colorado.
In March 1917, Capt. Calles was sent by the Sonora government to found a military and agricultural settlement with a customs crossing at the border with Arizona, according to Federico Iglesias, a local historian who has written a book about that event.
Iglesia said Calles, leading an expedition of 442 people, arrived at Puerto Isabel, located at the mouth of the Colorado River, west of what is today El Golfo de Santa Clara, and traveled north to the present-day site of San Luis Rio Colorado, consisting then of only four homes.
June 21, 1917, is the official date of founding of San Luis Rio Colorado, today a city of more than 200,000.
The planned site of the statue of Calles is currently occupied by a bust of Eulogio Medina Hoyos, who served as the city’s mayor from 1955 to 1958. City officials plan to relocate that bust to the grounds of City Hall.