Mexicali

View of the Civic Center Monument to the four original municipalities in Baja California (Mexicali, Mexico)

Mexicali is the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico as well as the capital of the municipality of Mexicali. Situated along the state's northern border with the U.S state of California, Mexicali is the northernmost city in Latin America, located at 32°40′0″N 115°28′0″W / 32.66667°N 115.46667°W / 32.66667; -115.46667. It has a population of approximately 1,150,000 inhabitants and it's constantly growing due to the number of Maquiladoras in the area and migrational aspects.

Founded on March 14 1903, Mexicali is adjacent to the city of Calexico, California, which lies directly across the US border. The link is emphasized by the way each city's name combines the words "California" and "Mexico."

Mexicali is bordered to the north with the United States formally Imperial County in California, to the east with the states of Arizona and Sonora in Mexico, to the west with the municipality of Tecate, and to the south with the municipality of Ensenada.

Mexicali has grown to be an important city in Mexico. Many immigrants who come from all over the country come to Mexicali in search of the American Dream and cross illegally, but many don't succeed and end up staying in Mexicali. Mexicali is also the only capital city which lies directly on the border with the United States.

Mexicali has also the largest Chinatown, called La Chinesca, and the largest number of overseas Chinese in Mexico. Today, many people in Mexicali have some chinese ancestry in their blood. Because of this, the city has one of the finest chinese food cuisines of the continent, rivaling cities such as San Francisco, California, where there's also a big chinese population among their citizens. These Restaurants can be found all over the city, not just in Chinatown, but also in the main boulevards, such as Justo Sierra and Lazaro Cardenas Blvds. One can also explore the Chinese Pagoda in Plaza de la Amistad, along the border crossing, as well as the modern Civic Center, which is the administrative heart of the municipality.

Although not as popular among tourists as Tijuana, located a couple hours from the city, Mexicali has many sites where people from all over the country visit, as well as visitors from United States and Canada, such as the Bullfighting Arena, Plaza Calafia, where many corridas are organized along the year. Mexicali has also a professional 18 hole Golf Course where both national and international championships take place regularly.

Still, the city is mainly a business place, with big manufactry and agricultural industries.

The citizens could say that one of main characteristics of this place, perhaps the most prominent, is its weather. Since the city was founded in the middle of the desert, mainly to avoid the dangers of the Colorado river spills, the area has a very extremistic weather, reaching very low temperatures in winter, but specially in the summertime. If you visit Mexicali during summer, in a normal day at noon, you could witness the thermometer easily reaching levels of 43 Celsius degrees (aproximately 112 in Fahrenheit scale) if the device is placed in the shade. However, the citizens are used to this, some people take a very special pride to live in such weather conditions, and it's even material of recurring jokes between the population.

History

In pre-Columbian times, the Río Colorado (Colorado River) delta was inhabited by a centuries-long succession of Yumano tribes. When the Spanish first stumbled upon the delta after traversing, with great difficulty, the Sonoran Desert's Camino del Diablo ("Devil's Road"), a sophisticated Río Colorado culture was cultivating squash, melons, peas, and five colors of corn: yellow, blue, white, red, and blue-white. The Native Americans also possessed an impressive knowledge of medicinal herbs and employed desert plants like mesquite and agave in a wide variety of uses. Like their neighbors the Kiliwas, the Cucapás' numbers were greatly reduced by Spanish evangelization in northwest Mexico.

Among the major Yumano groups in the region were the Cucapás, who navigated the difficult Río Colorado on reed rafts. Today Cucapá descendants inhabit a small government-protected corner of the delta near the junction of the Hardy and Colorado rivers. For the most part, the Indians work on agricultural ejidos or fish the rivers, although many have migrated to Mexicali. Few indigenous customs survived both the Spanish and Mexican eras; both the Kiliwas and the Cucapás continued to practice cremation rituals, for example, until they were banned by the Mexican government early this century.

The building of an agricultural empire

After the Jesuits left, the Spanish and later the Mexicans had little to do with the northeastern corner of the Baja California peninsula, perceiving it as an untamable, flood-prone desert delta. Around the time of the U.S. Civil War, a Yale geologist, while surveying a route for the Southern Pacific Railroad, wandered into the delta and discovered what the dwindling population of Yumanos had known for centuries: the 2.5-km-thick sediment was prime farming soil. The sediments extended far to the west of the river itself, accumulating in a shallow basin below the Sierra de Cucapá. All it needed was the addition of water to become an agricultural miracle.

In 1900 the U.S.-based California Land Company received permission from the Porfirio Díaz government to cut a canal through the delta's Arroyo Alamo, thus linking the dry basin with the Colorado River. To attract farmers to the area, the developers named the basin the Imperial Valley. In March 1903, the first 500 farmers arrived; by late 1904, 100,000 acres (405 km²) of valley were irrigated, with 10,000 people settled on the land and harvesting cotton, fruits, and vegetables. A collection of huts and ramadas that straddled the border was named Calexico on the U.S. side, Mexicali on the Mexican side.

Seeing that the equally fertile Valle de Mexicali lay undeveloped, another U.S. land syndicate, the Colorado River Land Company, moved in. Led by Harry Chandler, then publisher of the Los Angeles Times, the syndicate controlled some 800,000 acres (3200 km²) of northern Baja and in 1905 began constructing a Valle de Mexicali irrigation system. Instead of using Mexican labor, as the Imperial Valley developers had, Chandler imported thousands of Chinese coolies. After a major 1905 rainfall, the channel dug from Arroyo Alamo ended up diverting the entire outflow of the Colorado River into the Imperial Valley, taking Mexicali with it — unknowingly, the syndicate had tapped into one of the river's original routes. The Salton Sink, a dried-up remainder of the Sea of Cortez, became the Salton Sea virtually overnight.

Neither the U.S. nor Mexico wanted to take responsibility for the growing New River created by Chandler's mistake. As both valleys became increasingly inundated, the Southern Pacific Railroad stepped in and, to protect its tracks, dumped a sufficient amount of rock into the river to head the Colorado back into the Cortez, leaving a canal to the Valle de Mexicali. From then on, both valleys became highly productive agricultural centers.

Mexicali was born on 14 March 1903 with Manuel Vizcarra as the town's first authority and assistant judge (juez auxiliar). Mexicali is now the capital city of Baja California, the 29th state of Mexico. Shortly after the first irrigation canals were built, most of the land was bought by the Colorado River Land Company from the USA The company developed commercial crops and became almost a monopoly until it was decided to sell its land to Mexican farmers in 1936 and 1937.

The Mexicali Valley is the agricultural heart of the state, with more than 2,000 square kilometres of irrigated land. This valley is responsible for some of the biggest crops in Mexico, including wheat and cotton. With an ensured supply of water, Mexicali has become an important exporter of asparagus, broccoli, green onion and radish for the whole world.

Cotton became the most important crop of the Valley and it helped to develop the dressing and textile industries. In the early 1950s, the Mexicali Valley became the biggest cotton producing zone in the whole country. Production increased even more in the mid 1960s, reaching more than half a million parcels harvested in just one year.

People from Mexicali

Eugenio Elorduy Walther, current governor of Baja California
Jorge Paez, boxer
Lupita Jones, beauty queen Miss World
Rafael Limón, boxer
Juan Meza, boxer

External links

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