1950S
06 MAY 1951
The Alvaro Obregon Dam is a huge heap of dirt and rock 460 feet long and 180 feet high. When water from the Yaqui River backs up behind it next fall, it will cover 37,500 acres with lake, and will turn up 35,000 kilowatts of electric power. The dam is being built by Urbanizancones Construction Company of Mexico City.
21 APRIL 1953
The Yaqui is the only tribe in Arizona not under control of the U.s. Indian a service. And in the current movement to abolish government control, the Yaqui is often used as an example of how Indians care for themselves without government supervision.
09 DECEMBER 1956
Though decimated by years of disease and starvation, the proud and once fierce, Yaquis preferred the freedom of self-isolation to the better living which surrender might have brought. Approximately 3,000 acres of wheat and thousands of acres of other crop will be planted in 1957 in an all-out drive to incorporate the Yaquis into Mexico's economic and cultural life.
02 SEPTEMBER 1959
An estimated 6,000 persons, mostly defendants of the Yaqui Indians, already have moved out. The bridge is located at a small settlement called Cocorit.
12 APRIL 1952
Yaqui Indians file past the crude, adobe church at Guadalupe in their half pagan, half Christian Easter rites which re-enact Christ's passion and death. Dancing to the primitive beat of skin-covered drums and more pageantry will be staged Saturday with the rites reaching a crescendo amid joyous dancing and celebrating until dawn Easter morning.
02 APRIL 1955
The rituals, a blending of the Catholic Easter ceremonies, the medieval Passion play and the tribe's own primitive pagan religious rites, grow stronger during the next few days climaxing with a traditional Yaqui farewell circle.
12 DECEMBER 1956
A procession of the devout, men, women, and little children carrying lighted candles, surrounded the flower-adorned statue I'd the Virgin, slowly wound its way inside the great plaza before the church shortly after nightfall.
04 SEPTEMBER 1959
The dam itself is a huge thing, the largest earth dam in all of the North American content. And the water was dammed up behind it for several miles. To the left, water was running out very fast from the spillway and threatened severs, houses just below.