Cultural ties endangered: Drug violence could end mission tours to Sonora
The escalating shootouts between Mexican drug gangs in Sonora have created another casualty.
Kino Mission Tours, which for 35 years has taken thousands of people on weekend trips to get to know and appreciate the history and culture of northern Sonora, is on the brink of discontinuing the tours.
“It’s very, very sad,” said Nicholas Bleser, a retired National Park Service historian at Tumacácori who often led the tours since his first one in 1978.
With two bloody shootouts in less than a month in the Sáric-Tubutama area, about 40 miles south of the border, and the killing of two town officials in Tubutama, the previous tranquillity of the Altar River Valley has been ruptured. Fewer people are signing up for the tours. Tucson families that have ancestral ties to the region are traveling less, and residents of the towns are afraid to venture out of their homes.
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