Cananea is a municipality in the northern portion of the

Mexican state The states of Mexico are first-level administrative territorial entities of the country of Mexico, which is officially named Mexico, United Mexican States. There are 32 federal entities in Mexico (31 states and the capital, Mexico City, as a sepa ...

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is d ...

, on the

U.S. border While the United States has relatively complicated maritime boundaries, it shares international land borders with only two nations: * The Canada–United States border to the north of the contiguous United States and to the east of Alaska, and ...

. Its municipal seat is the

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

of Cananea, located at .

Population

The population of the municipality of Cananea was 35,892. Most of the population lives in the municipal seat, which had 31,560 inhabitants. This represented over 95.8% of the total. *Population in 1980: 25,327 *Population in 1990: 26,931 *Population in 2000: 32,061 *Population in 2010: 32,936

Towns and villages

The largest localities (cities, towns, and villages) are:

History

The territory now occupied by the municipality was originally a rancheria inhabited by the Pima Indians, who had been pacified by the Spanish in the seventeenth century. According to local information, the word Cananea comes from two Apache words: “can” which means "meat" and “efa” which means "horse". The colonial development of Cananea was influenced gby the nearby missions of Arizpe, Santa María and Cocóspera. In the middle of the nineteenth century Cananea became part of the province of

, becoming a "real de minas". On 8 November 1901, Cananea was raised to municipal status, after having been part of the municipality of Fronteras. In 1906 the site was stage to perhaps the most famous strike in Mexican history, the "huelga de Cananea". This strike was against the American owned mining company and was put down by forces brought across the border from the United States with considerable loss of life on the part of the striking miners. This strike is considered to be one of the precursors to the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

of 1910. Cananea became a municipality in 1901. In 1937 the territory of Naco separated and it became municipality of Naco. On 31 October 2001, the city of Cananea temporarily became the capital of the state of

during the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the municipality.

Geography

This '' municipio'' borders

Cochise County, Arizona Cochise County () is a county in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is named after the Native American chief Cochise. The population was 125,447 at the 2020 census. The county seat is Bisbee and the most populous city is ...

, in the United States to the north, and the municipalities of Arizpe (south), Naco and Bacoachi (east) and

Ímuris Imuris is the municipal seat of Imuris Municipality in the north of the Mexican state of Sonora. Location and Communications Imuris is located along Federal Highway 15 - the long highway between Nogales at the USA/Mexico border and Mexico Cit ...

and Santa Cruz (west). Its total area is 4,414.1 square kilometers and its average elevation is 1,500 meters above sea level. In addition to the municipal seat there are several small communities: ejido Morelos, Emiliano Zapata, Zaragoza and Vicente. Cananea has a relatively high altitude. The most important mountain peaks are Manzanal, Los Ajos, Cananeita, Magallanes, Azul and la Mariquita (2,480 m), which is the site of the

Guillermo Haro Observatory The Guillermo Haro Observatory (Spanish: Observatorio Astrofísico Guillermo Haro - OAGH) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (Spanish: Instituto Nacional de Astrofís ...

, an astronomical observatory of the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigges ...

(UNAM). The most important rivers are: Sonora, Bacanuchi and San Pedro; other streams are: Jaralito, Río Claro, Santa Bárbara, Los Difuntos, El Sauz, El Berrendo, El Álamo, Villa Verde, El Chiflón, Cuitaca, Cocóspera, El Anillo and San Antonio. There were 34 wells (2000), of which 20 were for irrigation, 11 for water supply for the Compañía Minera de Cananea, and four for drinking water for Cananea and ejido Zaragoza. The climate is semihot subhumid with an average monthly maximum temperature of 23.5 °C in the months of June to September and an average monthly minimum temperature of 7.4 °C in December and January; the average annual temperature is 15.3 °C. The vegetation is pasture in almost all of the area, while there are still stands of oak pine in the higher elevations. The areas that can be irrigated are scarce.

Adjacent municipalities and counties

Naco Municipality Naco Municipality is a municipality in the Mexican state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico. The municipality As municipal seat, the town of Naco is the governing authority for 128 other localities, most of which have only one or two residents and ...

- northeast * Fronteras Municipality - east * Bacoachi Municipality - southeast * Arizpe Municipality - south * Ímuris Municipality - southwest * Santa Cruz Municipality - northwest *

- north

Economic activity

Mining is still very important, with copper mines in the municipal seat. Cattle raising is also widely practiced. The main agricultural products are corn, beans, barley, sorghum, alfalfa, and apples. In the municipal seat there are manufacturing companies that operate under the system called maquila, assembling products for re-export to the United States.

Government

The current Mayor of Cananea is Jesus Reginaldo Moreno Garcia, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and his term expires in 2012. He is a retired teacher.

References

External links

* {{in lang, es}
Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México
Populated places established in 1901 Municipalities of Sonora *