Not a very productive day, with a lot of driving and little to show for it. I went to Guaymas, nearly 200 km away, which I had romanticized as a type of Puerto Vallarta in the Gulf of Baja California, and as the port of call of the vessel of the deep-sea drilling project (which I had hoped to be a part of a few years back). But this is no subtropical paradise. It sits in a desert landscape dominated by sahuaro cacti, and although the port is in a pretty bay, the city has grown in a disordered manner on the surrounding hills. Once again, I didn’t find a tourist beach, although I later learnt that I should have pushed a few more kilometers north to San Carlos for a more fresa tourist setting.
I did have an excellent seafood lunch, however, the highlight of which was a half dozen large clams, raw and delicious, accompanied by pico de gallo and a vast array of salsas.
On the way back I took a detour off the highway into the agricultural area south of Ciudad Obregón, into what would be the vast flood plain of the Río Yaqui. Things started to fall into place then. The Valle del Yaqui is named for the river, and the tribes living in the lower reaches of this fluvial valley were referred to as the Yaquís (in reality they call themselves Yoris and include all the peoples living in the lower reaches of the Yaqui, Mayo, and El Fuerte rivers, and on the delta plain of the three rivers). I am beginning to create a mental image that they were a lot like the Yokuts of the Central Valley, a cultural group that farmed the lower portions of the watershed, but retreated to the higher areas during the warm season. It is a prodigiously flat and fertile area, crisscrossed by numerous irrigation canals and dotted throughout with groundwater wells, which is remarkably reminiscent of the Central Valley.
Here I was, driving happily away, when I came across a modern looking complex called the Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Agricultural Experimentation Center. I was frozen in place and had to pull unto the side of the road. OMG! Borlaug … one of my heros … yes, of course, he did much of his magic here in the Valle del Yaqui. OK, let me start at the beginning by recommending to you the book “The Wizard and the Prophet” by Charles C. Mann. It is the story of two scientists, William Vogt (The Prophet) and Norman Borlaug (The Wizard) whose diametrically opposed views would cause profound changes in modern society. Working in 1940-1960, both of them faced the dilemma of increasing world hunger. The Prophet preached gloom and doom, is regarded by many as the father of the environmental movement, and emphasized the need for birth control (mostly in the developing world, of course). The Wizard believed that through science and innovation the world could produce better and more abundant crops and thus keep up with the demand, so using the ages-old method of artificial selection he set to create a new strain of wheat that would be resistant to the rust fungus, would have a greater yield, and would be easier to harvest. He succeeded, and from his modest efforts first in Chapingo (Mexico’s foremost ag university) and then in the Valley of the Yaqui, he soon was sending his cultivars to the whole developing world, as an advance to better strains of rice, corn, and beans. He was granted the Nobel Peace Prize for his work and is widely known as The Man Who Fed the World. You can well imagine my excitement when I stood in front of his statue, surrounded by the flags of the world and standing on a field of short, robust stands of wheat, with satisfyingly plump grain clusters. A tall and lean unassuming man in a battered hat, who opened the gates of The Green Revolution.
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