Quitovac

Quitovac, together with its annex El Chujubabi, is a Tohono O'odham indigenous community in the heart of the Gran Desierto de Altar, about 50 km south of the Arizona border and 423 meters up. It had 73 residents in 2020. Temperatures swing from -3.4 °C frosts to 47 °C heat, with only 187 mm of rain a year, and the community has held its land communally since 1974.

In 1694 Father Eusebio Kino reached a settlement called Moicaqui beside a tall, pointed hill. He counted about 80 people and noted springs and ponds, unsure whether they lasted all year; he came back in 1701. The place was later known as San Luis de Bacapa and was Quitovac by 1830. Mines opened at Quitovac in the 19th century and at Chujubabi early in the 20th, and mammoth remains have turned up nearby. The 1853 Gadsden Purchase left the Quitobaquito spring, once part of the same lands, on the US side.

The reason the village matters is La Laguna, some 400 meters west of the houses: a reed-fringed pond roughly 100 by 70 meters, fed by six springs, where a great blue heron has been seen. O'odham oral history ties it to the origin of the people; a powerful serpent was said to live there, and its story is linked to the deity I'itoi. A one-room hut of ironwood and saguaro ribs has stood beside the water for generations.

Each year at the July full moon the community holds the vi'ikita, a ceremony of song and dance asking for rain that draws O'odham from both sides of the border. It is a religious rite, not a show. Since 2007 a women's and girls' dance group, started at the Tribu Pápago primary school, has worn dresses printed with the man-in-the-maze design. Ranchers and mestizos in the area also keep a feast for San Francisco Javier with a trail ride, rodeo, music and food.