During his government in the Southern Territory of Baja California, General
Francisco J. Múgica negotiated before the Ministry of Finance the appointment of a commission “that would travel the peninsula and, through direct observation of its current conditions and development possibilities, report on the most important aspects of the problems inherent to the life of the territories, as well as their needs, in order to derive useful conclusions that could regulate the future attitude of the federal government, in close coordination with local governments, regarding the discernment of the essential measures for the definitive promotion of the development of those far-flung regions. ”
It alluded, of course, to the two territories of the Baja California peninsula.
The procurement was successful and the engineer Ulises Irigoyen was appointed to do so.
From those works was born Baja California transpeninsular highway,
In the first of the ten conclusions reached by the author, he said that “the transpeninsular highway must be built immediately because it is fully justified by the economic, social and military conveniences of the country.”
Thirty years had to pass for this to be possible.
THE FEDERAL ROAD 1
In the week anterior It was 48 years since the highway that runs through Mexican California was inaugurated, on December 1, 1973, to which the name of Benito Juárez was imposed without any consultation, a distinguished character who on a couple of occasions was on the verge of to alienate the peninsula in favor of the USA in order to obtain funds for their cause, and it was the Americans themselves who paradoxically opposed this absurd intention.
People from both entities, the territory and the state, converged on that date around the monument to that road, which is a stylized eagle whose wings symbolize the two peninsular Californias.
In response to the call launched by the Ministry of Public Works of the federal government, 56 projects were received aspiring to obtain the main prize of one hundred thousand pesos and the contract to carry out the works, which were achieved by the architects Edmundo Rodríguez Saldívar and Ángel Negrete González, at the head of several other professionals.
Authentic 36-meter-high watchtower that can be seen from five kilometers around, the enormous steel and concrete bird and the annex buildings had a global cost of almost 31 and a half million pesos.
A good number of South Californians arrived that Saturday at the beginning of December on board two buses that the territorial government made available to their guests, in which Octavio Reséndiz and this editor served as hosts of the trip.
Precisely at the foot of that monument located at the height of the parallel 28 degrees north latitude (imaginary line that since 1891 divides both entities by decree of President Díaz), President Luis Echeverría Álvarez spoke, who fulfilled this way, exactly in the middle of the six-year term, a commitment from his electoral campaign. Governors Félix Agramont Cota and Milton Castellanos Everardo, the secretary of the branch Luis Enrique Bracamontes and the deputy Jesús López Gastélum also spoke.
Days before, a museum had been hastily set up there, to which various assets of the South Californian archaeological, historical and paleontological heritage were taken, which soon disappeared.
We prevented them from extracting anything from the Historical Archive, despite threats from the promoter of such looting, an unofficial agrarian manager of the northern state. Instead he managed to take valuable pieces from the incipient museum that had been established in La Paz.
The reader knows where these materials went.
Then the Normal School of the Desert was established in those facilities, which for various reasons derived from the lack of planning with which it was created, had to relocate shortly after in Loreto as a Regional Center for Normal Education.
As of this complex, only the hostel-parador functioned, on the south side, which was first granted to the parastatal company Nacional Hotelera as a hotel. President, later La Pinta and lately The Halfway InnProposals for the use of the rest of the area were made from both sides; As none of the projects was viable, the Secretary of National Defense occupied it to locate a detachment there.
The book Parallel 28, living testimony of a path, prepared by Enrique Cárdenas de la Peña and published in 1976 at the request of the Secretary of Public Works, contains an extensive description of the history, the construction process and the perspectives of this essential contribution of the federal public administration to the development of the first California .
In those distant days when useful works were built instead of just speeches.
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