Pueblo Yaqui

Pueblo Yaqui, a comisaría of Cajeme, lies in the center of the Yaqui Valley at 18 meters above sea level and about 18 km from Ciudad Obregón. With 14,173 people in 2020 it is the third-largest town in Sonora that is not a municipal seat. It is not a tourist destination but a working farm town ringed by irrigated fields, worth a stop for anyone curious about how the Yaqui Valley became the region's granary.

It was founded in 1895 as Campo 9, and in its early years it was called Congregación Yaqui because it sat on that tribe's land. Settlers came from Sinaloa and Durango looking for work and land, many along dirt tracks from Pótam. Clearing began in 1908 with hand tools and moved slowly amid raids and crop burnings blamed on the Yaquis. A railway was once planned along today's Emiliano Zapata street, linking the town to the United States and the rest of Mexico, but the line was moved north to where Ciudad Obregón now stands, and the town lost that boost.

Irrigation and rich soil still brought newcomers: the Esquer brothers and the poet Solano Vidal Esquer arrived in 1915 and 1916, and around 1917 families of German, Canadian and Yugoslav origin came down from the United States during the First World War. In 1937 President Lázaro Cárdenas granted 17,000 hectares of cropland and 24,000 of grazing land, creating the El Yaqui ejido. One of the town's edges is Calle 5, also named for Norman Borlaug.

Town life centers on the bandstand, where events are held, and on Emiliano Zapata street, with its Benito Juárez monument and a public library in the old municipal market. Baseball is taken seriously, with teams in the valley's inter-ejido and teachers' leagues and several ballparks to watch them.