Northwestern Mexico (1951)

[Music] much of Northwestern Mexico looks like this it's mostly desert country very much like our southwestern United States but here irrigated farming is bringing new crops and prosperity on both sides of the Border about in the center of the Mexican part of this desert is a little town called houses grandis which means big houses and in one of the big houses lives a farmer named Alvarado of course an early morning chore for both the seor and his wife is to feed some corn to the chickens in their large rear Courtyard which is surrounded by an adobe wall and has storage sheds and a Grainery as well as space for the chickens after they have been fed we take a look at the main patio of this Farmer's home in spring and summer it's bright with many colored flowers and shrubs but now everything is brown and bare because winter is coming on all the rooms in the house open onto this patio and out of her sewing room seora Alvarado comes to ask her husband to take her to the store for some new dress material while they are getting ready to go to town let's see what the outside of the house looks like the irrigation Canal flowing here is a good place for the farmers ducks to stretch and enjoy themselves it also Waters the trees that provide relief from the hot summer sun glass in the windows and screens all around make this home look pretty much like homes in the southwestern United States don't they the reason the Alvarado use an old car is not because they can't afford a newer one it's because older cars can get over the bumpy dirt roads around kazus grandis better than new ones while seor and seora Alvarado are in town their son rides his favorite horse out to the fields to work his name is Carlos that's Charles in English and even though their large fields are cultivated with a tractor the part that will grow the family vegetables gets a finer going over with a hole But Here Comes Carlos Uncle who is a mechanic he has come because the Bor broke down not long ago and naturally must be repaired before a new crop is ready to harvest after a few minutes of talk they set out to inspect the machine notice the hoo near the front of the picture no more backbreaking cutting by hand for this farmer just beyond the red hay Balor is a harvester combine one of many that are simplifying farmwork in Mexico machines are the tools of all modern Farmers but what are the two main materials with which every farmer works the first of these is the Earth itself some Mexican soil is pretty much like clay it takes a lot of work and fertilizer to make a crop grow here but much of this part of the country is only a thin layer of dirt mixed with stones that lies directly on Solid Rock since it is not very deep it dries out quickly which brings us to the second basic material that every farmer uses no crop will grow with without water and Northwestern Mexico doesn't get much rain so for many many years the farmers have built little canals to bring the water of Mountain Springs down to their fields in The Valleys nowadays large dams are being built to store up the rainfall and make the desert productive just as we are doing in Arizona and California the Earth plus water and hard work by the farmers results in good crops such as this one do you recognize what is growing in this field just in case you're having trouble here's a closeup of one of the plants to help out yes cotton is now one of the most important farm products South of the Border after it's picked the ripe cotton is loaded into trucks and brought to the cotton Jin the modern Factory that we'll see here has all been developed from the hand operated cotton Jin invented by Eli Whitney today cotton is sucked up by what we might call an enormous vacuum cleaner and blown into storage bins later it is pushed into suction tubes again and carried to the Jenning machines which tear the cotton fibers away from the seed and clean them these levers the man pulls feed in more raw cotton from the Jenning machines the fibers are blown over to the compressor that packs about 500 lb of fluffy fiber into a mold somewhat smaller than a full-sized cotton Bale and while one mold is being packed workmen are busy getting an empty mold ready for the Machine by poking his fingers through slits in the side this man can tell when just enough fiber has been packed and then the empty mold is swung around to take the place of the one that is full the fiber in the mold is kept Under Pressure while being tied with thin metal straps and here begins almost the only operation that still has to be done by hand in a modern mechanized cotton gin with the hook end of the long straps bent down the rest is pushed across the top to the other side where another man bends them again and pushes them back underneath the bail toward us with the sides of the mold open the free ends are finally bent and fastened into the hooks but notice that the straps are still pretty loose around the cotton in a moment however after the corners of the burlap cover have been tucked in place the pressure will be removed from the mold and and now if you look closely you can see the cotton expanding so that the straps are very tight around the bail then with a big push the finished bail is rolled out of the way for the compressing machine never stops working meanwhile the completed bail has been put on a little trailer and is pulled out to the storage yard where it will join many others leaning against one another in Long rows here a big truck is being loaded with cotton to go to some Mexican Factory where it will be woven into cloth or perhaps it will be shipped abroad for Mexico's industrious Farmers grow more cotton than their own country needs so much of it is exported now in our imagination let's leap High over the mountains that are called Sierra Madre idental and go almost due south to a little town near the Gulf of California the name of this Village is pericos and it too is right in the middle of the desert cactus plants grow 40 ft tall among a thick mass of thorny trees and bushes you might think that the easiest way to clear this land for farming would be with a bulldozer but the sandy soil grinds into machinery and wears it out so it's cheaper to chop everything down by hand the largest trees are left for shade and the giant cacti are killed by cutting their Roots when they're dead they can be removed without any danger of the farmer getting all stuck up about his new field one of the most profitable crops grown here is Henkin those narrow green leaves don't look much like rope do they but just wait the young Henkin plants are carefully cultivated and watered in a nursery for 3 years then they are transplanted to Fields where they are set farther apart and allowed to grow for four more years until they get about this big by the time they are seven years old their oldest leaves are large enough and long enough to begin harvesting once a year a few of the bottom leaves are cut from each plant bundled into trucks and taken to the nearby Factory where as you can see the men have to be pretty careful unloading the bundles because of the many sharp Thorns along both edges of each leap here again we point out the large amounts of Machinery being used in even the rural sections of modern Mexico for now the Henkin leaves are pushed into an enormous tub where they are very quickly cooked by steam the reason for doing this is because there are many long tough fibers like strings running almost the entire length of each Leaf cooking makes it easy for a machine to strip out these fibers clean and free of any soft PP they go to a man who checks to be sure they are really clean and then sends them downstairs to another worker who loads them on a wheelbarrow but that isn't all of the fiber in the leaves for in the bottom of the tub is another machine that mashes the pulp and strains quite a few short fibers out of it so that actually there isn't much waste to a hakin leaf the short fibers are loaded on a wheelbarrow to and taken to the drying yard where they can safely be spread out on the ground to dry because their shortness keeps them from packing down close to the Earth where the Dew would make them rot but even several days of lying in the hot desert sun is not enough to thoroughly dry out these fibers so they must be tossed in the air and separated and turned over to be sure the Sun and air will reach every one the long fibers must dry over wires to allow the air to circulate all around them and preserve their toughness which is important by the time they reach this stage of processing the Henkin fibers are called by a new name and that name is hemp when completely dried the hemp is gathered into large BOS and stored away for future manufacture into useful products what products well a rough cloth for Sachs is one and Twine is another but perhaps the most important use of hemp is in rope and of course rope has many uses including yes even including this [Music] one [Music]