Miguel Alemán (La Doce)

Around Hermosillo, Miguel Alemán is better known as La Doce, or Calle 12. With 39,474 people at the 2020 census it is the second-largest community in the municipality after the capital itself, and one of the biggest places in Sonora that is not a municipal seat. It stands 64 meters above sea level on the Costa de Hermosillo, the flat, irrigated desert between the state capital and the Gulf of California, and state highway 100 to Bahía de Kino runs through it.

The name goes back to a federal settlement scheme. In 1949 the government's land-survey and colonization commission set up the "Presidente Miguel Alemán" colonization district here. People began settling in the 1960s, the 1970 census listed the place as a farm camp, and during the 1980s its population more than tripled as it turned from a zone of ejido farmers and small growers into a semi-urban town. It is now a comisaría of Hermosillo, and since 2010 residents have been raising money and filing paperwork to become a municipality of their own, possibly together with El Choyudo and Sahuímero.

Everything here depends on Irrigation District 051, Costa de Hermosillo, about 46,000 hectares watered by wells that are almost all privately owned. More than 200 farms surround the town, growing pecans, table grapes, oranges and other citrus for most of the year, squash, watermelon and melon in spring and summer, and chickpeas and wheat in the cooler months. Much of it is exported, and at peak season 500 to 600 farmworkers move through the area every day.

The town grew because workers stayed. Most came from Guerrero, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Chiapas and Puebla, many of them speakers of Indigenous languages, including Triqui, Mixe and Zapotec communities; researchers who study the town stress how multicultural it has become. Fast growth left gaps, too: in 2013 the town was added to the federal anti-hunger program and a community kitchen opened. Its big celebration is the Fiesta de la Vendimia in June, with dances, sports, concerts and crafts for sale. Highway 100 is being widened to four lanes between Hermosillo and the town, with at least 500 million pesos announced for the work.