photos from the edge 30 - A HISTORY OF ARIZONA MINERS, WRITTEN ON GRAVESTONES

photos from the edge 30 - A HISTORY OF ARIZONA MINERS, WRITTEN ON GRAVESTONES
Photos and text by David Bacon

The Sotos and the Jimenez must have been among the last families living in Harshaw.  When the tiny Arizona mining town was incorporated into the Coronado National Forest in 1953, there were still over 70 residents. They'd never owned the land beneath their homes, though, so the Forest Service called them squatters.  In the language of the time, it tried to "relocate" them, and by 1960 the census claimed there was no one there.  Nevertheless, the expulsion wasn't totally successful.  In the 1970s seven people were still surviving in homes among the abandoned buildings.

When I met Samuel Jimenez last winter, he was setting up tents and a stove with his two children on a flat by Harshaw Creek. Although it ran seemingly clear and transparent among the reeds and willows, the water was still dangerous to drink. At the headwaters of the creek is the long-closed Endless Chain Mine, and it's tailings still send zinc and copper into the spring that feeds it.

Jimenez was looking forward to a few days, he told me, of wandering among the graves in the small cemetery on the hillside above.  All its gravestones bear Spanish names.  Teresa de Acevedo was born 5-18-1877 and died 2-14-1941.  "Recuerdo de hijos" it says - a memorial from her children.  Two sheet metal markers memorialize those interred by puncturing holes that spell out their names:  'Angel Robles nacio 1878 fallecio April 1930."  Manuel Robledo, born April 17, 1941, his death date obscured by a blue plastic wreath.

The names on the metal plates at the intersection of the arms of welded iron crosses, each with four fanciful curlicues, have long since worn away.  A metal mesh screen hangs on two iron poles between a pair of graves, and on it an artist has welded sheet metal beaten into the shapes of leaves, flowers, a butterfly and a tree.  Ghostly figures appear in a faded photograph curled from the sun and rain.  There is no name - just two jars of dried plants, sealed with lids almost rusted through.

Whether the graves still have names or not, the people buried here were all families of miners, some Mexicans who came when the mines opened, and others born on this side of the border to Mexican families.  The hills here are dotted with mines, and many of them have Spanish names too.  

The biggest was the Hermosa.  From it the miners wrested 68 tons of silver ore per day in 1880, from five tunnels burrowing into the mountain above the town.  Others included the Alta and the Salvador.  Investors from back east also gave their mines English names like the American and the Hardshell.  Both white and Mexican miners worked in the shafts, but for decades their wages were unequal.  Mexican miners got the "Mexican wage" - a lot less then their white coworkers.

Harshaw is only 15 miles north of the border with Mexico, and that system was in place on both sides.  It led to an uprising at the huge Cananea copper mine, just south of the line and not far from Harshaw.  There, in 1906, miners fought the first battle of the Mexican Revolution against its U.S. owner, Colonel William Green, who brought in a contingent of the Arizona Rangers to put the workers down.  Miners struck the Cananea copper mine, still one of the world's largest, repeatedly over the years since.  The last strike lasted 18 years, and ended only last year.

Labor conflict has been part of the history of miners in southern Arizona as well, from the beginning.  In 1917 at the Bisbee mine, 75 miles from Harshaw, the Phelps Dodge corporation kidnapped 1300 strikers with a force of Arizona deputies.  The miners were loaded into railroad cars and abandoned in the desert 200 miles away.

Alfredo Figueroa, who today lives in Blythe, just across the Colorado River from Arizona, remembers that his grandfather was a striker in Cananea, and then his father in Bisbee.  "He used to tell us that your biggest enemy was your boss. When he saw any injustices he would intervene and protest.  My father died of silicosis, his lungs full of clots.  Blood would come out when he spat. The average life of a miner is not that long.  He never wanted us to work in the big mines. We were gambusinos, small mine operators.  

"Mining gave us a lot of independence.  But the workers who worked for the big mines were not this way.  The company owned all the houses and stores.  The people were just like property of the mine too.  Still, they paid a lot better then working in the fields. On the farms, they were domestic slaves.  There were 5000 braceros in Blythe and the contractor would charge them for everything.  When they got their check, it was zero, zero, zero, zero.  A miner always had a damn good shoe and a damn good hat.  

"Joaquin Murrieta was a miner, and the grandfather of our Chicano movement.  In the early 1900's my grandfathers were thrown in jail in Arizona because they sang the Corrido of Joaquin Murrieta.  The song was outlawed in California and Arizona, even on the radio.  Murrieta didn't succeed in achieving his ultimate goal, but he succeeded in organizing his people to fight for justice and that's what we wanted in the 60s.  We were fighting not to go into that damn army and to Vietnam."

In Harshaw the nitty gritty memories of the past are sometimes written, framed and incorporated into on the gravestones themselves.  In one, Angel Soto's descendants recall his murder in 1890 by thieves who tried to rob his cow near the Morning Glory Mine.  " It wasn't until late February 1900 that Angel's body was found by a woodcutter.  Having been covered by snow, the body was well preserved.  This allowed the family to give him a Christian burial."  He was buried next to his wife Josefa, who bore eight children, four of whom are also buried there.  

Their son, Miguel T. Soto was born in Florence, Arizona in 1883 and died in Harshaw in 1957.  "He was a miner and cowboy plus had many other jobs.  [He] was laid to rest here in 1957 near his parents Angel and Josefa Soto, his brother Mariano Soto, and his sisters Guadalupe Duarte and Josefa Jimenez and other relatives, in-laws and friends."  

Buried next to him is Angelita D. Soto, born at the turn of the century near Tubac, and died in 1923. She married Miguel Soto at the age of 16 and had four children and 32 grand children  Her family inscribed on her grave, "Rest in peace mama and nana.  Some of us don't remember you and some of us never knew you.  We all love you."

Alfredo Figueroa