There wasn’t, at first, anything special about this place.
It was a tract of land apart from ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, a couple of miles north of downtown, a bit east of the Santa Cruz River. There were farms nearby, and brushy woods along the flowing river and long stretches of desert toward the mountains.
Then, a hundred years ago, it started becoming a meaningful place for the Yaqui people. A real-estate developer, A.M. Franklin, donated 40 acres that became known at that time as “Pascua Village.†Already home to a few Yaqui families, it was platted in July 1922, and more families began to move in. They started holding traditional ceremonies, including the famous Easter rituals, on the grounds there.
A century later, the little neighborhood now known as Old Pascua has survived as a center of the Yaqui universe, despite decades of disregard, threatening development proposals, the establishment of a new Yaqui village on the southwest side and the designation of that new village as sovereign tribal territory.
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Through it all, Old Pascua is still there, just west of North 15th Avenue and just south of West Grant Road. With luck, this year the commercial property adjacent to Old Pascua will become part of the reservation, and so will the ceremony grounds in the heart of the neighborhood. The bill putting that land in trust has passed the U.S. House and only needs to pass the Senate.
“This neighborhood stayed intact,†said Peter Yucupicio, the chairman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, who was raised and still lives in the neighborhood.
He was talking with me Thursday outside the Old Pascua Museum and Cultural Center, 856 W. Calle Santa Ana. Tribal attorney general Alfred Urbina and the director of the museum, Brandon Varela, were there too, having taken a break from Holy Thursday ceremonies.
“That’s the beauty of it,†Yucupicio went on. “The families that were here in the 1900s are still here. Even after 100 years, we’re still here.â€
A village is established
Some Yaqui people already lived in what’s now Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ when, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, thousands of Yaqui migrants fled a genocidal campaign by Mexican President Porfirio DÃaz and Mexico’s army. Many established themselves in small camps up and down the Santa Cruz River valley, working at farms or mines.
In that era, this newspaper was full of reports of war in Mexico and of Yaqui residents traveling back and forth across the border, often bringing guns and ammunition to help their people in the fight. One such effort, in 1917, led to nine Yaqui people being arrested by Buffalo Soldiers stationed at Fort Huachuca, as they headed south to fight the aggressions of the Mexican army.
They were charged with violating U.S. neutrality during the Mexican civil war. The story goes that Franklin, the real estate man, grew interested in the plight of the Yaqui people due to the criminal case against those nine at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s federal court. He became acquainted with Yaqui leader Juan Muñoz, known as “Juan Pistola,†and they and others came up with the idea of the village.
There could be a less charitable explanation, Urbina said Thursday, as we and five others conversed in the shade of a mesquite tree at the ceremonial grounds.
“Land here was changing from the Spanish land grants to the U.S. land grants,†Urbina said. “After the railroad came through, they tried to move all tribes away from the city, from choice land onto reservations.â€
Many Yaqui people lived on relatively valuable land adjacent to the river and other water sources.
Whatever the reason, the idea for the Yaqui village worked, more or less. Families moved in and set up homes for their extended families. Most were ramshackle, made of scraps from the dumps. Usually it was one larger structure with a kitchen surrounded by a few smaller ones for relatives. None of the homes had running water, electricity or sewers.
But the ceremonial grounds quickly became a cultural center. That was so much the case that by the late 1920s, the Chamber of Commerce and this newspaper, among others, were touting the Yaqui Easter ceremonies as a tourist attraction. They graded the road and had Boy Scouts handing out directions for how to get to the site, Urbina said.
The top headline in the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ 100 years ago on April 12, 1922, read: “Yaqui Indians to Usher in Eastertide With Their Weird Dances.†That jarring word “weird†in the headline probably meant something close to “unusual,†but still it gives you a sense of how the Anglo power structure viewed the Yaqui people.
Another Star headline, from Feb. 4, 1923, said: “Pascua Becomes Center of Yaqui Civilization of Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ as Indians Buy Land.â€
Community split
This was not a happy-ever-after story. At first, few of the new residents actually got title to the properties where they moved, and the Yaqui village was one of the poorest places in the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ area.
As the city grew and surrounded it, things did not get better.
“The winters were real cold; the summers were real hot,†Yucupicio said. “I grew up with kerosene lamps and no electricity.â€
By the 1950s and 1960s, drug addiction had started to take hold, and violence was common.
“There was a lot of fights and riots and stuff like that,†Yucupicio said.
The village became part of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in 1952, but the municipal authorities didn’t really help, and the police avoided the place if they could.
“The police had the mindset of, ‘Let the Yaquis kill themselves,’†said Francisco Valencia, the secretary of the tribal council.
In the early 1960s, Yaqui leader Anselmo Valencia and the Pascua Yaqui Association began arguing that the people should find new land and get out of there. Rep. Morris Udall pushed a bill through Congress that deeded 202 acres to the association. The idea of a “New Pascua†very slowly started becoming reality.
This plan divided the community, as some started leaving for the southwest side, and others stayed. The Star’s Tom Turner wrote a six-part series in 1970 showing how federal grants and outsiders’ efforts had produced little at the New Pascua village.
At the same time, outside efforts grew to move the Yaqui people out of Old Pascua, either to make way for road projects or industrial development. Former Star staffer Henry Barajas has written a Ramon Jaurigue, and his efforts to stop the displacement of people from Old Pascua and neighboring areas.
Gradually homes were built at the new village, and at the same time, the Model Cities program, led by Jaurigue, helped modernize Old Pascua. A grant from Catholic Charities helped residents take ownership. The old shacks were replaced by block homes with running water, sewers, electricity and paved roads.
Congress recognized the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in 1978 and designated the new Pascua site as their reservation.
Reclaiming Old Pascua
The founder of the Old Pascua museum, Guillermo Quiroga, was one of the men sitting with me under the mesquite Thursday. He’s one of the long-timers in Old Pascua.
“Not everybody wanted to leave,†he said. “The ones who stayed here wanted to fight and stay and control our destiny.â€
Old Pascua is a rare “urban Indian†neighborhood in the United States where cultural traditions have remained strong, said Varela, 26, the museum director. These days, there is even a resurgence of interest in the old traditions among the Yaqui youth.
So, even as Casino del Sol was built at the reservation site on West Valencia Road, and the tribal government was established there, Old Pascua persisted. Now, these two paths of local Yaqui history are winding back together.
The government on West Valencia has bought up most of the triangle of land between North Fairview Avenue and Interstate 10, just west of Old Pascua. The former Century Park 16 theaters, across North Fairview Avenue from the neighborhood, are set to become a new casino, and the tribe plans to build a hotel and conference center as well.
With the U.S. Senate’s approval, those parcels and the ceremonial grounds in Old Pascua will become part of the reservation, though they will still be serviced by the city of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ under an intergovernmental agreement that calls for payments in lieu of sales taxes to be made by the tribe.
“Eventually, it would be nice to reclaim what we consider Old Pascua,†said Valencia, the tribal secretary. “To me, as a capitán, it would strengthen our future here.â€
Whatever the area’s status, the residents have shown over a century they have the resilience to persist.