Naco, Sonora

Naco
Town
Border crossing at Naco
Coat of arms
Naco Location in Mexico
Coordinates: 31°19′37″N 109°56′52″W / 31.32694°N 109.94778°W / 31.32694; -109.94778
Country	Mexico
State	Sonora
Founded	1901
Municipal Status	1937
Area
• Total	651.8 km2 (251.7 sq mi)
Elevation (of seat)	1,408 m (4,619 ft)
Population (2010) Municipality
• Total	6,401
• Seat	6,064
Time zone	CST (UTC-6)
Area code(s)	633
Website	(Spanish) /Official site

Naco is a Mexican town in Naco Municipality located in the northeast part of Sonora state on the border with the United States. It is directly across from the unincorporated town of Naco, Arizona. The name Naco comes from the Opata language and means nopal cactus. The town saw fighting during the Mexican Revolution and during a rebellion led by General José Gonzalo Escobar in 1929. During the second conflict, an American pilot by the name of Patrick Murphy volunteered to bomb federal forces for the rebels, but mistakenly bombed Naco, Arizona instead. Today, the town has been strongly affected by the smuggling of drugs, people and weapons across the international border.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was dominated by the Opata peoples. Naco, Sonora, along with Naco, Arizona, came into being in 1897 as a border crossing to connect copper mines on both sides. Naco, Sonora was officially founded in 1900 with the construction of the Naco-Cananea rail line. Until 1901, the area was part of the municipality of Fronteras, then part of the municipality of Cananea. It became an independent municipality in 1937.

There was a major miners’ strike in Naco in 1906, which is seen as a precursor to the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The instability from this strike resulted in troops on both sides of the border facing each other. During the Mexican Revolution, the town would change hands various times. At stake was the revenue from the custom’s house and when Arizona voted itself dry in 1915, revenue from the saloons that cropped up. One of the major battles occurred in 1913. General Ojeda, who was in command of Mexican federal troops in Sonora, moved this force of Yaquis and regular army soldiers from Agua Prieta to Naco as rebel forces closed in on 12 March. Ojeda fought against the rebels from his Naco base for a number of days before the Yaquis decided to cross the border into the U.S. and surrender. Ojeda continued to fight with the men he had left but eventually the rebels overran Naco on 13 April, with Ojeda and the rest of his men also crossing the border to escape.