The University of Arizona Press
June 5, 2025
Au Te Waate / We Remember It is not just a historical account but a linguistic treasure, preserving the naturally produced speech of five Hiaki speakers from a previous era. Transcriptions of interviews recorded with family members and friends by author Maria Fernanda Leyva, and edited by Heidi Harley, provide invaluable insights into the Hiaki language. The interviews document and preserve the narrative styles, vocabulary, and grammatical constructions of the time. Read an excerpt from the book’s Introduction below.
Background Concerning the Porfiriato and the Hiaki Diaspora
My name is Maria Fernanda Florez Leyva, and I am a Hiaki woman from Tucson, Arizona. I collected the interviews that are presented in the following pages. Before I give a few details about the collection of the interviews and the five main individuals whose words appear in this book, I will offer a brief perspective on the circumstances which led to the tumultuous years that doña Luisa and the others spoke about.
Porfirio Díaz’s first term as president of Mexico was from 1877 through 1880. Prior to that time Díaz was influenced by his tutor Benito Juárez, who had been a beloved president of Mexico due to his commitment to social justice. Díaz’s early allegiance was thus to the ideal of liberalism. Indeed, during his first term as president of Mexico, Díaz had crafted the Plan de Tuxtepec, a plan of governance that rested on the principle of a one-term presidential office with reelection forbidden. However, despite this, he ran for the presidency again and was reelected in 1884, remaining in power until the Mexican Revolution in 1911.
During this second term as president, he became a notorious dictator, and it was during this time that Díaz formulated the deportation and extermination program against the Hiakis. This program was being carried out against the Hiaki people because for a long time they had been a thorn in the side of the Mexican government. Not only that, the Hiakis lived on delta land that was very rich and fertile. Parts of Hiaki land were also on the coast of the Gulf of California, and the waters had bountiful fish, shrimp, and other seafood. The desert provided many different types of cactus fruit and trees that also yielded fruit. Game was also plentiful in the mountains and desert for my people to feast on. No wonder, then, that the Mexican government coveted Hiaki territory; the dictator Porfirio Díaz made it his goal to wrest this valuable real estate from the Hiakis through whatever means he found at his disposal.
When years of warfare against the Hiakis proved to be unsuccessful in removing them from their territory, Díaz begin to carry out the deportation and extermination program against my people. It was during this time that horrific atrocities were imposed on my people. The Hiakis who were captured were sold to plantation owners as slaves. Those who did not appear to be strong enough to work were put to death, primarily infants, very young children, and the elderly. The elderly knew that they were going to be put to death. They would bid farewell to their children and tell them they were going to be given some kind of injection. Although their children would cry and beg the nurses not to kill their elders, saying that they would do the work of the elders, their pleas fell on deaf ears. By the next day the elders were dead. The Hiakis who were not captured and deported to the henequen plantations in southern Mexico sought refuge in the Vakateeve (Tall Bamboo) Mountains and waged guerrilla warfare against the Mexican soldiers (also known as the pelones or peronim, “bald ones”). Many others came north to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and California. It is these events, and the continued persecution of Hiakis even following the revolution, that are described in the interviews presented here.
The Collection of the Interviews
So that you can understand something about myself and my reasons for collecting these interviews documenting the history of the Hiaki people, I would like to share with you some of the story of my family and my life.
My siblings, my father’s younger brother, and I grew up in a four-room house in Barrio Libre in South Tucson, Arizona. I had two brothers and three sisters, but one brother died as an infant. My paternal grandmother Maria Carlota Alvarez de Tapia—my Haaka—raised us in that home that her father Juan Alvarez had built, along with my paternal grandfather Fernando Flores and an uncle, Ramon Alvarez. This was in close proximity to a Hiaki settlement, Bwe’u Hu’upa (Big Mesquite). Bwe’u Hu’upa was located between 22nd and 25th Streets immediately east of where I-10 now runs. This comfortable old home, on 26th Street, was built in or around 1914 when my grandmother was about sixteen years of age and already married to my grandfather, Fernando. At that time, they already had my father, Vicente Flores, who was one year old. Prior to that, my grandmother and her parents had lived in Yuma, Arizona, where she was born in 1898. Her father, my great-grandfather, arrived in Yuma when he was sent there by the railroad company, and eventually settled there.
I write primarily about Haaka, as she is the one who raised us. My grandmother was a very intelligent woman who was well-versed in the Hiaki language and also in Spanish. Her mother, my great-grandmother, Eusebia Valenzuela, was also very fluent in Hiaki and Spanish. Haaka’s mother and father arrived in Arizona from Sonora in or about 1877. Prior to coming to Arizona, they had lived in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, for a number of years. Eusebia’s mother had traveled to Magdalena, along with her daughter and other Hiakis, to escape the ever-escalating turmoil in Hiaki territory farther south. At that time, Hiakis were being captured and deported to the henequen plantations in southern Mexico. Eusebia’s mother, my great-great-grandmother, purchased several hectares of land by the riverbank there in Magdalena and kept a small farm. However, when the peronim began to arrive in the area looking for Hiakis, my great-great-grandmother sold the farm, and she and her family, including my great-grandmother Eusebia and her husband Juan, made their way to Arizona. According to Haaka, her mother and grandparents were very happy living on their small farm in Magdalena, and it was a sad day when they had to pull up stakes and relocate to Nogales. My great-grandmother Eusebia was about fourteen years of age and already married to Juan when they left Magdalena. They arrived in Nogales, Arizona, and settled there for about three years, during which time Eusebia’s mother, my great-great-grandmother, passed away. They then left Nogales as the peronim made excursions into Arizona to round up Hiakis. The peronim were not concerned that they were entering another country to capture the Hiaki refugees. In fact, they came as far north as Tucson to capture Hiakis and return them to Mexico.
From Nogales, the family joined ranks with other Hiakis and traveled to Tubac. Since there was little work to be had in Tubac, they again pulled up stakes and moved to Tumacacori at the invitation of the missionaries there. Due to the continuous raids and pillaging conducted by the Chiricahua Apaches on the church grounds, the missionaries decided that drastic measures had to be taken. The raiders were making off with foodstuffs that the missionaries and the people, including some Hiakis who had taken up residence there, needed. Some Hiakis and others who lived among the missionaries were killed or injured during those raids. The Apaches would make off with not only vegetables but also horses, cattle, goats, etc.—any livestock that the missionaries had. By inviting more Hiakis to come and settle there, the missionaries hoped to protect the settlement. After spending some time in Tumacacori, however, the family decided to move again, to Tucson, in search of a larger Hiaki community where ceremonies and other traditional activities could be carried out. They also wanted to get as far away as possible from the border dividing Arizona and Mexico, to a place where they felt they could live in relative peace.
Many circumstances led to the Hiaki people leaving their homeland in Hiak Vatwe (the Hiaki River), but primary among those circumstances was that my people were seeking a peaceful existence with their family members, far away from the ravages of war and the cultural genocide that was going on all around them in Sonora. So it was that my ancestors’ and other Hiakis’ arrival in Arizona and other parts of the United States became necessary due to the difficult life that they had in Mexico.
Maria Fernanda Leyva is currently retired but has worked at Tucson Unified School District, the Department of Economic Security, and the Pascua Yaqui Department of Language and Culture, as well as at the University of Arizona with anthropologist Edward Spicer and linguist Heidi Harley. Heidi Harley is a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and author of English Words: A Linguistic Introduction, as well as numerous journal and book articles and edited volumes.
