Going to Nogales, Mexico

A group of us went on a cross border tour  to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, sponsored by the Santa Cruz Foundation.

This picture shows us standing in Nogales, Arizona, being briefed by our tour leader before we walk across the border.

In the background going up the hill is the metal fence built by the U.S. to contain the border. Everything to the right of the fence is in Mexico.


We were a mixed group - some Samaritans, some Nova Scotians, educators, a business man.  Interestingly, a lot of us were artists.... and we were all curious to learn more about our neighbors to the south.  In years past, we'd all gone there as tourists, but now we're warned that it's unsafe, ruled by drug cartels, and told not to go.  We went in the daytime, felt perfectly safe, and learned a lot about this thriving city across our border.

                                                      Here we are on the Mexican side.

We started at a beautiful old restaurant ( and ended there -- more pictures of that, later).  That's our green bus waiting for us.

The first part of our day was in a section of town that is made up of dirt roads and shacks, in no real order, in a very hilly part of the city.  Newly arrived people from southern Mexico are coming to this part of town, claiming a piece of land and building on it.  Many have no utilities.  There is a lot of work available in Nogales, so people are flocking there. The government and organizations are trying to provide day care, after school, and recreational centers. We had to climb over trenches and up narrow steps to get to some of them.

 There were lots of dogs and wire loosely strung in the section that had utilities

An overview of this section of town.  Everywhere we went, the people were welcoming and a pleasure to be with. There was much more to this trip.  I'll continue showing it in my next blog.