TRAVEL: Bisbee, Arizona

Bisbee is tucked and folded  between mountains that once held much of the world's copper deposits. The mines'  pits are deep, steep, and astonishingly close to the town which was built on the mountains' flanks.

Bisbee, 1904

A overdue visit with my Midwestern brother and his family brought me here.  My sister-in-law's daughter and grandchild live in Bisbee, and I'm not done exploring Arizona.  Perfect! And, my brother is a biologist specializing in the environment, a patient, engaged hiking and birding companion. 

HISTORY: THE BISBEE DEPORTATION

Bisbee's pits, now emptied of copper by the demands of war, plumbing, expensive cooking utensils, and cell phones, were once the scene of a dehumanizing and brutal anti-labor action, the Bisbee Deportation.   

In July, 1917 1300 mine workers,suspected labor sympathizers, and assorted townsmen were kidnapped by a deputized posse of over 2000 men led by the local sheriff.  Machine guns guarded the baseball diamond while these inhabitants of Bisbee were loaded into cattle cars and transported to Hermanos, New Mexico, over 200 miles away.    

Phelps Dodge, the major mine operator, was instrumental in seizing the telegraph so no news of the action was broadcast until after the arrival in New Mexico, some 16 hours later. 

In Bisbee, martial law existed for over 5 months.  The Citizens Protective League's court conducted trials which determined if the defendant was a "loyal American". If he held worker/union values, or evidence of connection to union organizers was presented, he was determined to be a traitor, and deported.   

Today, Bisbee's narrow steep streets echo the sixties.  Though Bisbee is designated on the National Register of Historic Places, the only monument to those maltreated workers is a very badly sculpted copper miner statue, looking rather aggressively defiant; one comment suggested it looks like a work by Ayn Rand. 

Bisbee's got funky galleries, coffee shops, and antique shops. The brick walls are pinky dusk, and creamy Victorian architectural details add deep charm. An old car driven by a hippie in tie-dye passes a slim white Porsche Carrera on the street. Gentrification and gritty deterioration conflict and seem edgy- attractive, and comfortable, an ambiguous brew. 

 (copper smelter,
early 1900's)
   
On Sunday morning there was downtime; so  I went to church.  St. John's Episcopal Church was right across the parking lot, established in 1896. 

     Seemed it was Social Justice Sunday; the mass and special intention for the day was to support South Sudan in its civil war.  During the service, some visiting choir members sang a song haunting in its rightness for Bisbee:  Woody Guthrie's Deportees.  It commemorates braceros returning to Mexico who died in a plane crash. Their names were never given in the reports; only the white American crew who lost their lives were named.

"…Some have no papers
some are not wanted,
our work contract's out
and we have to move on 
…we died 'neath your trees 
and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, 
We died just the same."

…the nightmare of the unwanted
transported in boxcars
so it began a long time ago.

Life in southeastern Arizona is lived with the constant presence of the Border Patrol. White car hoods peek out from chaparral on quiet roads into the canyons.  An drone blimp surveils the skies, its lumpy white shape an badly disguised cloud in the blue blue sky.

Truly, for the issue of returning undocumented workers to Mexico, that ship as sailed; into our daily lives and economic reality.  I'm darkly amused as the operations of advanced industrial capitalism inexorably document its economic mechanics: physical labor done cheaply by poverty-line human beings.