Samuel P. Goddard Interview -- Arizona - Sonora Relationship
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SG = Sam Goddard
SG (S. Goddard): They didn't think of themselves as Mexican-American, believe me. Uh, a guy named Jacome - Alex Jacome now he was straight out of Mexico. He ran the biggest department store for heaven's sake. And, uh, uh, Alex would never think of himself as a Mexican in anyway shape or form. And we had a lot of people like Alex down there. Uh, they were very constructive and helpful and had good connections in Mexico, which was where a great deal of Tucson's business came from. And, uh, of course, Nogales and the other towns on the way. Uh, but they, they in Southern Arizona it just seems as though Northern Mexico is part of it. And, uh, I got to know wonderful man who was Governor of Sonora and uh his name was Luis Encinas. And he was a - he, he just represented everything that we thought was good right about that period. And, uh, matter of fact, I went back to Washington with him once. He was quite a, quite a fella and so were his supporters who came - I got to know a lot of them. And, uh, they came up here and coordinated things between Arizona and Sonora. You would think that being right next to each other it would be easy. It wasn't. Uh, and now it's even worse. Or they, they, you know, they just organized a new army to put down there on the border. Which is ridiculous (banging sound), I mean this thing is to try to take and prevent what we started. Our people here -- the farmers up here wanted cheap labor. Okay. So they were always were anxious to have Mexicans come up here and work. And we had guest labor, we had all these different kinds of programs to take. And now look what happens. And, uh, this is the worse that I can remember. So many people died in this, this thing. That country down there along the border, unless you've been there, it's hard to understand how much really wide-open desert we've got.
