Stories by Mitch Tobin and photos by Jeffry Scott
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The delta is a fickle place.
Erratic flows from the Colorado, and the ebb and flow of the gulf's tides change conditions from hour to hour, season to season and year to year.
The dynamic process is most obvious in the intertidal zone, the 30- to 40-mile stretch of the river's main channel where the coming and going of the sea creates shifting zones of salinity.
It is in these traditional fishing grounds of the Cucapá Indians where the delta's mighty "tidal bore" once reigned. The collision of the incoming sea water and the outgoing river would create a wall of water that sometimes topped 15 feet and migrated with the tides.
In 1922, not long after Aldo Leopold visited, the tidal bore - el burro to Mexicans - killed 86 peasants from Guaymas when it rolled the 36-ton steamer Topolobampo. Only 21 bodies were found, and just 39 passengers survived.
"Days later they were still being dragged out from the mud flats nude, half insane from thirst, blistered by the sun and raw from predatory swarms of insects," wrote Frank Waters in his 1944 book, "The Colorado."
Today, with el burro tamed by upstream dams, Cucapá fishermen worry more about the simple lack of fish. A tribe that once flourished now struggles to find enough to eat.
Like the Tohono O'odham near Tucson, the Cucapá are divided by the international border. Near Yuma they run a casino, but the benefits don't appear to have trickled down to tribal members in Mexico.
"The river here used to have lots of water. We could drink from it, not from bottles," recalled Inocencia Gonzalez, 65, one of the tribe's leaders. "There also used to be lots of fish. Now there are hardly any."
The Cucapá have fishing rights to Laguna Salada, a brackish lake 30 miles southeast of Mexicali that was once so productive it was said to "boil" with fish. The Colorado used to feed Laguna Salada, but today the lake is mostly dry and devoid of life.
A century ago, the Cucapá numbered in the thousands, but the tribe has dwindled due to assimilation, intermarriage and the decline of a lifestyle dependent on the river.
"They used to be a thriving, dynamic community. Now it's just a few hundred people hanging on," said Mark Briggs, conservation director of the Tucson-based Sonoran Institute.
Javier Mosqueda, president of a 2-year-old advocacy group of delta residents, said Mexico continues to suffer from the unfair division of the Colorado.
"The laws seem to be working for the people up there in the U.S., but for the people down here, they aren't," he said.
He said the delta's situation won't improve without cross-border cooperation.
"The water doesn't belong to the people of the U.S. or Mexico," he said. "It belongs to the river."
