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Ensenada: Its Background, Founding and Early Development
La Siesta Press Award On May 15, 1982, Ensenada celebrated the centennial of its founding. The date was finally acknowledged after a series of controversies which in themselves confirmed how unique the birth of the cities in Baja California Norte had been in comparison to others in Mexico and in Baja California. In Mexico, most of the existing cities were founded by royal decree on the sites of precolumbian dwellings; therefore, a document existed naming each new city officially, and the date was unquestionable. As regards the oldest towns in Baja California, these were founded on the sites of the Jesuit or Dominican missions, and their birth could accurately be traced to the date of the founding of each mission. This would not be the case of the four main existing cities in Baja California Norte: Ensenada, Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate. How then did Ensenada become the site for the oldest city in Baja California Norte? Its bay was discovered on September 17, 1542, by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. He named it San Mateo, stayed for six days and did not report any inhabitants.1 Sixty years later, when Sebastián Vizcaíno rediscovered it on the Fifth of November 1602, and renamed it Ensenada de Todos Santos,2 he did not mention any population either. Historians next have documented testimony regarding Ensenada from Father Junípero Serra, who passed through on his way from San Fernando Vellicatá to San Diego in the summer of 1769. He is the first to acknowledge the existence of inhabitants of whom he said: "There is immense gentility, and all those of this countercoast (of the South Sea) wherefrom we have come, from Ensenada de Todos Santos, for that is what the maps and charts call it, live very leisurely with various seeds and with the fishing that they do in their rafts of reeds in the form of canoes. "3 No one knows when these people arrived. We can only surmise that they remained there for some time, and later migrated to the mountains or to the Dominican missions developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Dominican fathers, for some unknown reason, did not favor Ensenada and stayed south in Santo Tomás, and north, in San Miguel. So Ensenada continued to be a solitary and perfect bay with a scimitar valley that softly ascended towards its blue mountains. The land was there for the taking, and Alferez José Manuel Ruiz, a native of Loreto and Commandant of the Frontera Territory (the capital of which was then, San Vicente), solicited the property of Ensenada in 1804 from the Governor, José Joaquín Arrillaga. It was granted to him in 1806 at a price of two pesos. The grant totalled more than 3500 hectares, and Ruiz used it only for grazing. In 1824, two years after he had moved to Loreto as Political and Military Head of Government, he sold the property to his son-in-law, Francisco Gastelum for $600 pesos.4 Gastelum and his descendants thus became the first non-aboriginal inhabitants of Ensenada. During this period, such missions as San Vicente and Santo Tomás comprised the main nuclei of population in the northern part of the peninsula. But, after brief periods of prosperity, they would all be abandoned. For many years Baja California lodged only a chain of nine humble missions of adobe in which the Dominican fathers labored from 1774 until 1845, when they left because the Mexican Government secularized all of them. During the Dominicans' stay, Mexico won its independence from Spain beginning its fight in 1810 and consummating it in 1821. Then, in 1848, a radical change in the history of the two Californias, Alta and Baja California, took place. Due to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico sold for fifteen millions an enormous part of its territory, including California, to the United States.5 As a consequence, Baja California became the northernmost frontier of the Mexican Republic. In 1854 when William Walker, the filibuster, raided the territory, he inhabited the house of Gastelum naming it "Fort McKibbin," in honor of one of his group who died in a skirmish. It was the only house that existed in Ensenada.6 After he was ousted by Antonio Melendres and his improvised guerrilla, the country settled back into its languor. In 1857 Francisco Ferre, the political authority of the Northern Territory, wrote to La Paz that he was moving to Alta California describing the misery of the region in these terms: ". . . in the village of Santo Tomás, and Head of the Territory since 1851, there are only nine families. . . From this town up to the border there are only nine ranches inhabited by Mexican families, in the same situation more or less as the ones referred to–(that is barely surviving)".7 In spite of all, during the lapse of twenty years, with the arrival of more colonists from the interior of Mexico and from the South of Baja California, the region saw a sprinkling of a small population which settled in various places and which grew or diminished according to the economic and political changes. Since 1870 the lands adjacent to the Gastelum estate had been claimed. To the south Dona Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton and Don Antonio L. Sosa were two of the neighboring proprietors; to the north, El Sauzal de Camacho had also been settled.8 On the other hand, when the United States Civil War ended in 1865, 9 more and more adventurers formed a migratory current towards Baja California attracted by the lure of gold which had been discovered in San Rafael in 1870 by Ambrosio del Castillo.10 The capital of the Northern District had been moved from San Vicente to Santo Tomás in 1851, and as a consequence of the gold rush, it was again moved in 1872 to Real del Castillo, as San Rafael was renamed, quickly having become a boom town of 1500 inhabitants. There the capital remained for ten years.11 As a result of this boom and the traffic that the mines originated, a customshouse was established in Tijuana in 187412 but Ensenada's importance as a port was quickly recognized. The people of Real del Castillo preferred to do their commerce through a seaport than through a painful land journey to Tijuana. Because of Ensenada's significant geography, businessmen pressed to have a customshouse built there. On the other hand, gold was beginning to dwindle, and political upheaval due to the Sub-Prefect José María Villagrana's bad government, which raised import taxes preposterously, began to weaken Real del Castillo's prominence. In 1876 Villagrana was deposed at gun point and replaced by José Moreno who acted as interim Sub-Prefect.13 In 1877, the Governor of La Paz, Col. Andrés L. Tapia, arrived in Ensenada aboard the ship Mexico, in order to settle these political matters. He appointed a new political authority14 and took all conflicting parties with him to La Paz for a hearing. It was at this time that he was presented with a document signed by influential persons demanding that the capital of the Northern Territory be moved to Ensenada. He promised to pass on the petition and in the meanwhile, authorized to have Ensenada declared a port in December of 1877.15 The Federal Government, however, considered that Tapia had exceeded his authority and nullified his decree, but the traffic through the port was not contained; on the contrary, it increased. These considerations were the ones recently taken into account to allege that Ensenada had been a port and a population nucleus before 1882. Nevertheless, its importance was yet minimal, and no official document existed to establish due recognition. The petition of 1877 was reiterated in 1882 by the Customs Office of Tijuana, asking that said office be transferred to Ensenada and the port be named Head of the Northern Part.16 On May 15, 1882, the Government in La Paz notified the authorities in the north that their petition had been granted and that Ensenada should be considered the capital from that day on. This document is the basis then, for the recognition of the founding of Ensenada, although as will become apparent later, it still had very little to boast of as a city proper.17 At the same time, north of the border, after only fifteen years, Alonzo Horton had succeeded in establishing his "New San Diego," in what today is the city's downtown.18 His success as well as that of other estate entrepreneurs of California, whetted the appetite of land speculators. On the other hand, Mexico's efforts to colonize its empty domains had met with high expenses and little results. These two factors: men avid for land and, a country with plenty of it, inclined the Mexican Government to give vast land grants. In 1883 the Law of Colonization was passed, permitting foreigners to acquire, through concessions, huge extensions of territory with the purpose of colonizing and developing its resources.19 On July 21, 1884, Major George H. Sisson, an American, and Luis Huller, a German naturalized as a Mexican, obtained a concession in Baja California from parallel 29 to 32o 42', including the island of Cedros. They went on to buy the concession of Adolfo Bulle, which included the land between parallel 28 and 29; and finally acquired another concession from parallel 29 up to the border. In this way they were in legal possession of most of the Partido Norte of Baja California, roughly 18,000,000 acres, and had legal title to all the land therein which was not already privately owned.20 In 1885 they formed the International Company of Mexico in Hartford, Connecticut, with an initial capital of $1,000,000 dollars.21 Sisson was named the General Manager of the company which had representatives in Ensenada, San Diego, Hartford, and New York. Soon enough they were buying up most of the privately owned real estate in and around Ensenada. However, in 1887, a new Congress in Mexico City was in session, and the President was Porfirio Díaz. This legislature attacked the concessions given under Manuel González' presidency. Díaz ordered a thorough investigation. His Minister of Agriculture and Fomento, Carlos Pacheco, based on the optimistic report of Teófilo Masac, the first government inspector sent to Baja California in 1887 to investigate the situation, successfully defended the concessions. They had been granted under strict stipulations, which, according to Masac, were being met except for having settled 2000 families, as one stipulation called for. But this requirement could take up to a period of ten years, starting from September of that year.22 Max Bernstein, a friend and compatriot of Huller, had been named the company's General Manager in Baja California. Beforehand, in May 1886 he had purchased the Pedro Gastelum estate, 533.63 hectares (1317 acres) of the choicest land on which the new city was to be developed.23 In a clear speculatory move, Bernstein now resold it to the International Company in March of 1887 for $10,000 pesos.24 All the lots sold previously by Gastelum to the original founders of Ensenada -- some fifty or so -- were respected and duly registered. By 1887 plans for the new city as well as for other cities both north and south of Ensenada had been drawn up by Richard J. Stephens. The Ensenada estate was promptly divided into 100 x 100 meter blocks, with streets twenty meters wide. Lots were subdivided into 50 x 25 meter lots and sold for $40 and $50 dollars for those on the corners.25 Ensenada was to be called "Ciudad del Porvenir" (City of the Future). Nestled close to the northern hills of the bay, the streets of the oldest city in the Northern Territory were laid out giving the avenues names of notables in alphabetical order in the downtown area and fixing for the cross streets an ordinal numeration in the American fashion, a custom which Tijuana and Mexicali followed -- all three, exceptional cases in Mexico. The main Avenue was named Ruiz, after the first owner of the bay. When in March of 1887, Charles B. Turrill, a writer, arrived by sea in Ensenada in the company of George Sisson and Teófilo Masac, he reported that because there was no hotel, they had to stay in two rooms at the customshouse, "The most prominent building" in town.26 He estimated the population at 300, but Masac reported 440 inhabitants. 27 Yet, there was already a four-page bilingual weekly newspaper, La Voz de la Frontera, as well as another one in English; three flour mills, a fruit cannery andadjoining ranches which belonged to American and Mexican colonists and which produced wheat, orchard fruits, pumpkins, vegetables, corn, barley, olives, grapes and honey. By June of that same year, Ensenada had two hotels: The Pacheco and The Bay View; and on October 13, 1887, the Hotel Iturbide, a picturesque three-storied building perched on a hill with a stupendous view of the bay, was inaugurated.28 The population had grown to 1450, according to Sanchez Facio, the second government inspector to come to Baja California who arrived in November of that year,29 For a while the International Company attracted a good number of small industries such as a brewery, soap factory, a textile industry, and another flour mill. However, the company soon had financial troubles. Profits were hard to come by, many disillusioned colonists felt defrauded and left. Indeed, the company had used propaganda exaggerating the bounty of the agricultural land and omitting its difficulties. Above all, Sanchez Facio's report was realistic, and it disclosed many irregularities which Masac had overlooked. In short, the company was not complying with the stipulations required. Despite their efforts, the company's directors could plainly see that it would be impossible to colonize the two thousand families in the time their contract required. Also at this very same time, the land boom in San Diego had suddenly stopped.30 The political and economic signs were ominous. In 1889 Sisson sold out in London to "The Mexican Land Colonization Company." 31 During 1889 and 1890 there was a gold rush in the District of El Alamo, 100 kilometers southeast of Ensenada, and these discoveries undoubtedly played a major part in convincing the English to buy. By 1889 the gold fever was such that "the manager of the Coronado Hotel had to wire San Francisco to recruit employees." All of his help had hurried off to El Alamo and left him alone.32 The interest of the American company to sell at the height of this rush can only be attributed to the pressures mentioned before. Rather than risk losing its concession, it opted to sell out while it still could. Major Sisson had proven himself a poor administrator. So, the English came with fresh capital, but they concentrated their efforts in the San Quintin Valley as well as in the gold mines of El Alamo. When these projects gave out, little by little they abandoned the enterprise but held on to their land holdings. In 1891 Ensenada had the makings of a small, pleasant town with a park, a beautiful beachfront, kindergarten and a government grammar school. It also had another newspaper, The Lower Californian, but as the Alamo boom died out, "the country knew that period of keenest depression that always follows a false inflation."33 Slowly, Ensenada recuperated throughout the decade. Needless to say, even though J. Southworth, a journalist who visited the town in 1899, described the American company as a "wildcat operator" interested only in speculating in land, according to David Zárate, a prominent native of Baja California who had witnessed the city's growth from its beginning, declared that the International Company had been very significant in the early development of Ensenada. Undoubtedly, a city would have gradually grown out of the small port, but without the company's thrust, even though it was brief, it would have been a harder and slower start. Unlike Southworth, David Zárate was not sympathetic towards the English company and declared its intervention as "nefarious." As a Mexican citizen, he repudiated, above all, "the absolute power that it held in every order in more than thirty years."34 All ups and downs weathered, Ensenada nevertheless made headway. By the end of the century, the town had a telegraph and electricity was available in homes from 5:00 p. m. to 11:00 p.m. Gas was used for public lighting (the policeman in charge was responsible for turning on the lamps every evening at dusk). There were five little private schools, one of which was in English; the official Grammar School and one Superior School of Commerce.35 Travel to Tijuana was done by stage, a trip that took two days. The passengers usually slept at a post in Canón de Cancio and continued on the next day. With these hardships, people preferred the trip by sea. The Saint Denis, a 352-ton cargo and passenger ship, touched port six times a month making the round trip to and from San Diego.36 No passports were required for Mexican citizens to enter the United States. They left Ensenada in the afternoon and arrived in San Diego at four or five in the morning, weather permitting, and waited until 6:00 o'clock, for the " Outpost," a little house in Point Loma, to open. Then they proceeded to a few days of busy shopping and stayed with friends, relatives or at a hotel. In later years, the Brewster Hotel would be a favored stop for the people of Ensenada. As the decade of the nineties advanced, other Mexican ships traveled on a regular basis from Mazatlán to Ensenada, to San Diego, and even to San Francisco and back; and many foreign vessels began touching port. Fishing enterprises run by Americans and Chinese were also busy with the catch of abalone. As in San Diego, these were the beginnings of our fishing industry. A customshouse report taken from July 1, 1898 to April 30, 1899 shows a list of imports made by sea from countries such as Germany, China, Holland, Spain, France, Italy, India, England, Turkey and United States. Ensenada was clearly on the map. Of course, the country it did most business with was the U.S. Its exports were mostly raw or semi-processed materials. Of the $148,042 gold pesos in exports $91,562.00 were made up of silver and gold. Altogether the economy was sound for the balance of its imports and exports was:
The importance of mining was still a major economic factor in the Northern District and in its capital city. Despite their ephemeral booms, Real del Castillo and El Alamo Districts, together with several other entities, continued to be exploited steadily and produced significant amounts of precious metals, as one can appreciate from this report.37 All throughout this period (1885-1910) Mexico enjoyed the famous era of "Paz Porfiriana" or "Porfirian Peace," so called because of President Díaz' ability to keep the country completely stable. In Baja California these years were marked by an influx of many nationalities, such as Italian, American, English, Jewish, Spanish, French, Chinese and German; but the main stock continued to be Mexican. Together they forged a small but prosperous community to which each added some of the flavor of their mother countries. The Andoanegui family of Spanish descent began manufacturing wine; there was a spaghetti factory. Mr. Moorkens, an American, produced candles that were given a premium at the Chicago World's Fair. There was a tannery which made fine saddles and several Jewish and Mexican businessmen with connections in San Diego and Mazatlán handled banking documents. One of their ads reads: IVINSON AND CO., Bankers, Ensenada, Lower California.38 There were two drugstores duly tended by medical doctors who also happened to hold mining claims. During those days people moved about in dusty streets which were kept clean by sweeping and watering them down, but on special evenings, they held literary and musical events, and on grand occasions elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen held beautiful balls at theIturbide Hotel. The flow of champagne was common, and the small orchestra knew the latest waltzes. It was to be at one of these balls, held in the spring of 1890, that a group of American filibusters, reportedly in connivance with Cor. Buchanan Scott of the English Company, planned to overtake the Mexican authorities in order to declare Baja California a new country. The plot, directed by Walter G. Smith, a San Diego journalist, was denounced in the San Francisco Chronicle and in The San Diego Union, and consequently aborted. The residents of El Alamo signed a protest against these maneuvers in the summer of 1890, and the colonists of Ensenada, no matter where they had come from, rallied to back Gral. Luis E. Torres the Governor and Military Commander (1888 -1889) and asked to have the concession to the company revoked.39 Meanwhile Ensenada continued to have the contrasts and eclecticism of a true frontier town. In a list that J. Southworth gives of prominent citizens in the year of 1899 -- next to a distinguished Mexican lawyer who specialized in mining and commercial law and who spoke Spanish, English and French with "elegance and facility" came the description of a man of whom Ensenada could boast because he claimed to be a direct descendant of Ananías, the famous biblical personage. Besides, Charles Forbes, alias "Poker Charlie," "had more than that distinction. He owned the only kangaroo racehorse -- a cross between a coyote and a burro -- and he also claimed to have the only complete register of all the yarns of "The Thousand and One Nights. " It is further noted that he was very agreeable and liked by all who knew him, although, in due honor to his alias, he sounds today like one big bluff.40 In the eighties, land had been set aside for a Methodist Church as well as a Methodist University, but since the American company moved out so quickly, these plans never materialized. The spiritual needs of the people of Ensenada, in their majority Catholics, were taken care of by a priest who traveled once a month from San Diego to administer sacraments and say the Mass. By the end of the century, Dona Luisa Goicochea de Ochoa, a native of Mazatlán who had arrived in Ensenada in 1889 as a young bride, took it upon herself with the help of other prominent ladies, to raise funds for a Catholic church. After having organized bazaars and numerous raffles and after having convinced the Military Commander to donate all the bricks, the temple was finally erected. In the temple's corner, she buried a sealed metal box which contained a parchment describing all their endeavors. So far as we know, it is still there, at Third and Gastelum.41 Thus, the twentieth century found the Ensenada Bay as the site of the only meaningful population center in the forever forlorn Northern Baja California territory. There are still quite a few people alive who knew the city then. The memories of their childhood and growing years are marked with color, amazement and nostalgia. As tiny as Ensenada was, it had the elements of an interesting society because of the variety of its settlers. As a matter of course, most of this generation spoke English fluently for they learned it at Mrs. Wilson's42 school or at American boarding schools. This early transculturation still persists, and it has moved from north to south and from south to north enriching throughout the years the lives of the people on both sides of the border. Yet, despite their isolation from the center of Mexico, they hung on to the traditions brought from home. There were bull-fights and all the ladies attended dressed in Spanish garb; there were operetta representations called the Zarzuelas, also of Spanish origin; there was the music that came from Mexico's deep interior; and enthusiastic celebrations of all Mexican holidays. But these were the outward manifestations. In the intimacy of their homes they continued to live according to the hispanic traditions of close family ties. Of utmost importance for the preservation of their cultural heritage was the school system which the Mexican Government always supported. After its illustrious beginnings as capital of the District, Ensenada's fortune would again wane when the capital was changed to Mexicali by Colonel Esteban Cantú in 1915. Did this move affect the people of Ensenada? I asked Dona Emilia Ochoa de Ojeda (daughter of Dona Luisa Coicochea de Ochoa). "Yes, of course," she answered and promptly added, "but we carried on." They did, all through the rest of that decade and the twenties when the town suffered the worst recession of its history. Painfully, slowly, it began to recuperate with favorable measures taken by Abelardo Rodríguez' government which made Baja California a Duty Free Zone (late twenties), with the construction of a paved road to Tijuana (1930s), and through the mid thirties with the influx of more migration from Mexico's interior, plus a small, but steady current of faithful tourists that loved peace and outdoor life. Migration doubled during the Second World War when Ensenada was made the base of the Second Military Zone of the Sixth Regiment of the Pacific. At this time, the fishing canneries, started in the late twenties and thirties, flourished and set the basis for a future industry of great importance. In the 1960s it had 85,000 inhabitants, and it began to experience a population explosion. Today, as an important industrial, fishing and tourist center, it is a city of more than 250,000 inhabitants . . . still struggling to keep up with its sudden growth, with the ecological problems of pollution that modern life has brought, but a city true to the spirit of her ancestors, no matter where they came from, people who, like Dona Emilia, embody a spirit of fortitude and survival. NOTES
1. Juan Páez, Navegación del Sur al Norte, 1543, General Archive of the Indies, Patronato 30 No. 13, p. 5, Seville, Spain. 2. Diego de Santiago, Viaje y derrotero de naos que fueron al descubrimiento del puerto de Acapulco a cargo del Gral. Sebastián Vizcaíno, 1604, General Archive of the Indies, Mexico 372, Folio 31, Seville. Spain. 3. Francisco Palou, Relación histórica de la vida y apostólicas tareas del venerable Padre Fray Junipero Serra, Porrua, México, D.F. 1970, p. 61. 4. Registro Público de la Propiedad, Public Regístry of Property in Ensenada, Baja California, Tomo I, Sección I, pp. 9, 10, 11 and 12. These pages contain the history of the Ensenada property from 1804 to 884, January 10, 1884. 5. J. Patrick McHenry, A Short History of Mexico (Garden City, New York: Dolphin Doubleday, 1962), p 115. 6. David Pinera, Las ciudades de Baja California, University of Baja California, Colección Historia para todos, Cuaderno I, Enero de 1980, p. 3. 7. Adrián Valadés, Historia de la Baja Calífornia, 1850-1880, UNAM, México, D. F., 1974, p. 55. 8. Registro Público de la Propiedad, Public Registry of Property in Ensenada, Baja California, Tomo I., Seccion I. 9. Bartlett, Fenton, Fowler and Mandelbaum, A New History of the United States (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 349. 10. Don Meadows, Real del Castillo, Olvidada capital de Baja California, UABC, Coleccion Historia para todos, Cuaderno II, Mayo, 1980, p. 7. 11. Ibid., p. 11. 12. Alfonso Salazar Rovirosa, Cronología de Baja California del Territorio y del Estado, de 1500 a 1956, Cuaderno No. 4. 13. Meadows, Real del Castillo, pp. 16, 18. 14. Ibid., p. 22. 15. Ibid., p. 23. 16. Zeferino Castaneda, Gobierno Político y Comandancia Militar de la Baja California, Petition by this Head of the Customs Office of Tijuana, to the Government in La Paz, Baja California, Archive of the Government in La Paz, Baja California, 1877, Document No. 57, Foja 304. Copy in the archive of Walter Meade, Mexicali, Baja California. 17. Archive of the Government in La Paz, Baja California, Document No. 954, May 15, 1882, Copy in the Archive of Walter Meade, Mexicali, Baja California. 18. Ruth Held, "A Momentous 100 Years: The Story of San Diego High School," The Journal of San Diego History, XXVIII (Spring, 1982), p. 77. 19. Charles Nordhoff, Peninsular California (New York: Harper and Bros, 1888), p. 87. 20. Ibid., pp. 85, 86, 87. 21. Pablo Martínez, Historia de Baja California, México, D. R, 1956, p. 463. 22. Nordhoff, Peninsular California, p. 87. Main stipulations in synthesis: 1) File a bond with the Mexican Treasury 2) Begin surveying the lands 3) Finish the surveying within a prescribed time 4) That all surveys and reports be duly filed and verified at the Office of Public Works in Mexico City 5) Payment of the purchased land 6) Colonization of 2000 families. 23. Registro Público de la Propiedad, Public Registry of Property, Ensenada, Baja California, Sección I., Tomo I, Folios 9-12. 24. Ibid., Sección I., Tomo I, Folio 77. 25. David Goldbaum, Personal Archive, Book of Records, 1887. In possession of his daughter, Minerva Goldbaum, Dated December 1887. Consulted by the author in December 1980. 26. Charles B. Turrili, A Trip to Lower California, Part II (San Francisco, 1887), Typescript, p. 2. Turrill describes himself as a writer. 27. Ibid., p. 3. Masac arrived in March 1877. 28. Norton B. Stern, Lower California, Jewish Refuge and Homeland (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1973). Stern quotes Goldbaum. The Iturbide Hotel burned in 1904. 29. Manuel Sanchez Facio, The Truth About Lower California (San Francisco, 1889), pp. 85-90. 30. Richard F. Pourade, The Glory Years (San Diego: Union Tribune Publishing Co., 1964), p. 212. 31. Registro Público de la Propiedad, Public Registry of Property, Ensenada, Baja California, Tomo III, Seccion I, Partida 59, Folios 138 to 171. 32. Martínez, Historia de Baja California, p. 471. 33. J. R. Southworth, El Territorio de la Baja California, 1889, Published by the Government of the Territory, p. 20. 34. David Zárate Z., Bosquejo Histórico de la Península de Baja California, Ensenada, Baja California, 1948, p. 19, Private Edition. 35. A. E. Uruchurtu, Apuntes Históricos sobre la Educación en Baja California, Apendice de la Obra: Educación Publica en el Distrito Norte de la Baja California, Mexicali, 1928, M. Quiroz,Martínez, p. 117. 36. Southworth, El Territorio, p. 89. 37. Ibid., p. 25. 38. Stern, Lower California, covers. 39. Martinez, Historia de Baja California, pp. 472, 473. Walter G. Smith is described as a "San Diego journalist." Martinez claims that "Some persons who investigated the matter affirmed that the plot had been prepared by English diplomats of Central and South America in order to raise distrust against the United States in those days in which the Panamerican Union was being organized." 40. Southworth, El Territorio, p. 28. 41. Emilia Ochoa de Ojeda, Personal interview conducted by the author, December 1980. Dona Emilia is 92. No one remembers the exact day of the inauguration of the Church del Purísimo Corazón de María. The Church's archives were moved to Tijuana and in that city they have not been able to locate the early documentation. Dona Emilia estimates that it was either late in the nineteenth century or early in the twentieth. 42. Corinne Wilson was the wife of an American settler. THE PHOTOGRAPHS on pages 18 and 26 are courtesy of the author and Carlos Gallegas. All others are from the San Diego Historical Society's Title Insurance and Trust Company Collection. |
