Jesús García, a young locomotive engineer in the employ of copper-producer Phelps Dodge, drove a train carrying four tons of burning dynamite away from the town center of Nacozari, México on November 7, 1907. About a half mile out of town, the dynamite exploded. The shock of the blast was felt ten miles away. Jesús García and thirteen others were killed. Nacozari and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of its people were saved.
Jesús García and his desperate deed are celebrated in ballad, literature, and shrine. For modern México, November 7 is a National Holiday. In the capital city, a museum exclusively exhibits García memorabilia. Numerous García monuments grace plazas in towns and cities throughout México. Nacozari, located 80 miles south of Douglas, Arizona, is now Nacozari de García, renamed to honor Jesús García. Each year on the anniversary of the day of his sacrifice, Nacozari de García honors the memory of the popular young bachelor, who did his duty and beyond.
Jesús García was hired at the age of 17 in 1900 as an apprentice on the narrow-gauge, short-line railroad that hauled workers, supplies, and explosives six miles from Nacozari to the underground works of the Pilares Mine. On return trips, the trains brought copper ore out of the mountains for processing in Nacozari’s concentrator and smelter. The youngest child of a blacksmith and cafe matron, Jesús diligently worked his way up from water boy through fireman and brakeman to fully qualified engineer of a steam locomotive. His work so satisfied his employers that in 1904 he and several of his fellow workers were rewarded with an all-expense-paid trip to the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri.
In his personal life, Jesús was known as a cheerful, generous man, who lived by the Mexican adage “A lo dado no se le da fin.” — “A gift has no end.”
On that fateful day in 1907, a horrifying decision confronted Jesús García. The dynamite on his train had caught fire not far from a powder magazine where another 500 tons of dynamite were stored. He could run away, or he could attempt to remove the bomb from the compact town nestled in a bowl-shaped valley.
Jesús García did not hesitate. He raised steam and headed uphill toward open country. On the way, he ordered his crew to jump. Half a mile away, the dynamite exploded. The train all but vanished. Jesús was dead. Nacozari and its people were saved.
Aside from the monuments they have raised and the songs they sing to honor Jesús García, Mexicans have contrived for their “Hero of Nacozari” the ultimate tribute. In northern Sonora, in the huddled communities best acquainted with his heroic sacrifice, when someone must bid farewell to a lover, or an aged mother, or a most-cherished brother, or a revered god-parent, he or she may say: “Adiós Jesús. Adiós García.”
