Beyond the River and Into the Gulfscape: Yaqui Mobility in Baja California

Abstract

Abstract The visions of missionaries, investors, adventurers, and literary writers have long dominated the history of Baja California, while Indigenous peoples remained at the margins of these accounts. This article proposes a redirection of the peninsular history, one that centers on the experiences of the Yaqui people, whose interconnections with the gulfscape are more far-reaching than expected. Yaqui history for decades has been restricted to the Sonoran-Arizona borderlands. Yaqui people, I argue, were not only familiar with the Gulf but comfortable navigating the waters of the gulfscape, developing an intimate relationship that integrated a cultural perspective. This article challenges the north-south corridor as the only landscape for movement and argues for a new definition of mobility as a more complex process. The article traces a lateral Yaqui mobility from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century to focus on the variegated experiences of Yaquis in Baja California. It highlights how mobility contoured the lived geographies of Yaqui sailors, divers, miners, and their families, creating space for community, culture, identity, and a sense of belonging that was uniquely Yaqui. In doing so, it also documents the contributions of the Yaqui people to the local political and socioeconomic conditions interconnected with the occurrences of the global economies.