Cananea jail

The Cananea jail was built in 1903 and is located in downtown Cananea. It was the first public jail of the city and is currently a museum "Museo de la Lucha Obrera" with exhibitions of photographs and instruments used in mining.

La carcel de Cananea or The Cananea Jail song is a corrido that has become part of the culture of Cananea and the state of Sonora. It describes the experiences of a man accused of murdering Chinese immigrants while at this jail. According to historian Rodolfo Rascón, a man called Francisco, nicknamed El Cucharón de Batuc ("The Big Spoon of Batuc"), wrote the song in 1917.

Climate

The municipality of Cananea has a sub-humid Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csa), with an average monthly maximum temperature of 74.3 °F (23.5 °C) in the months of June to September and an average monthly minimum of 45.3 °F (7.4 °C) in December and January; the average annual temperature is 59.5 °F (15.3 °C).

Atypically for the Mediterranean climate type, the dry season occurs in spring and early summer, whereas the rainy season is in mid/late summer and autumn. Through winter the rains are less intense, but of longer duration. Called “equipatas”, they can fall in the form of snow. In the months of February, March, and April there are frequent frosts, hailstorms, and occasional snowstorms. Precipitation averages at 511 millimetres (20 in) annually.

Mayors

1901-1903	Manuel Larrañaga	-
1903-1905	Ignacio Macmanus	-
1905-1907	Filiberto Barroso	-
1907-1910	Eduardo R. Arnold	-
1910-1911	José Clemente Arnold	-
1911-1912	Ignacio L. Pesqueira	-
1912-1918	Manuel M. Diéguez	-
1918-1920	Florentino Rocha	-
1920-1921	Julian S. González	-
1922-1923	Salvador Taylor	-
1923-1924	José Figueroa	-
1923-1924	José Figueroa	-
1924-1925	Ramón R. González	-
1925-1927	Dolores Romero	-
1927-1928	Ramón R. González	-
1928-1929	Maximiliano Zuñiga	-
1929-1931	Dolores Romero
1931-1933	Juan Caro
1933-1935	Ignacio F. Loaiza
1935-1937	Ramón C. Meneses
1937-1939	Jesús M. Molinares
1939-1941	Alberto Matti
1941-1943	José F. Payán
1943-1946	Jesús González y González
1946-1949	Jesús R. Juvera
1949-1952	Ramón Guerrero
1952-1954	Antonio Fernandez Ruíz
1954-1955	Rogelio Castro Cuen
1955-1958	Fidel Sánchez Márquez
1958-1961	Ramón Millanez
1961-1964	Jesús Burrola Tolano
1964-1967	Victor Manuel Tapia Berkowitz
1967-1970	Edmundo Navarro Parra
1970-1973	Roberto Elzy Torres
1973-1976	Jesús Ahumada Barreda
1976-1979	Héctor Lavander León
1979-1982	Roberto Torres Carbajal
1982-1985	Gildardo Monge Reyes
1985-1988	Rafael Carrillo Monzón
1988-1991	Francisco Javier Taddei Taddei
1991-1994	Gildardo Monge Escárcega
1994-1997	Héctor René Tagles Zavala
1997-2000	Francisco García Gamez
2000-2003	Mario César Cuen Aranda
2003-2006	Francisco García Gamez
2006-2009	Luis Carlos Cha Flores
2009-2012	Jesús Reginaldo Moreno García
2012-2015	Francisco Javier Tarazón Curlango
2015-2018	Fernando Herrera Moreno
2018-2021	Eduardo Quiroga Jiménez
2021-2024	Eduardo Quiroga Jiménez

Mining

Mining is the main source of revenue for Cananea and will be for the foreseeable future. Eighty percent of the population is directly or indirectly supported by mining companies in Cananea. The first and most important mining company is Buenavista del Cobre, S.A. de C.V. (formerly Mexicana de Cananea, S.A. de C.V.) owned by the Southern Copper Corporation,^[4] and still shares ownership with Grupo Mexico, S.A.B. de C.V. The Buenavista open-pit copper mine in Sonora, Mexico is one of the biggest porphyry copper deposits in the world. Producing since 1899, it is the oldest operating copper mine in North America. The deposit was mined exclusively through underground methods until the Anaconda Copper Mining Company started open-pit operations in the early 1940s. Grupo Mexico has continuously expanded the Buenavista operation since it acquired the property for US$475m in 1990. The Buenavista mine produced 965 million pounds (Mlbs) of copper in 2019 which accounted for approximately 44% of Southern Copper’s total copper production during the year. The mine also produces silver and molybdenum as by-products. Cananea is among the world's largest copper mines in terms of reserves.

The building of a concentrator with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons of zinc and 20,000 extra tons of copper has already started at the Buenavista Zinc project in Cananea, Sonora. The project has a total budget of US$416 million, of which the majority has already been invested. The engineering study was also finished, and the project has all the required permits. The new concentrator will increase the capacity of producing zinc once the project is operational and provide more than 2,000 operating jobs. Operations should start in the second half of 2023.

A miners strike at the Buenavista del Cobre mine lasted almost three years, until broken on the night of June 6, 2010, when Mexican police dispersed striking workers.^[5] On June 6, 2011, the Confederation of Mexican Workers (“CTM”) was granted the collective bargaining agreement for the Buenavista union, replacing the miner's National Union of Mining and Metallurgical Workers Sindicate, Section No.65 (Labor Union), headed by Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

The second and smaller active copper mine is "Minera Maria", owned by Minera Frisco, S.A.B. de C.V. a Mexican company controlled by Carlos Slim Helú and family, including Inmobiliaria Carso, S.A. de C.V. and located west of Cananea. The plant has an installed monthly production capacity of 2,500 tons of copper cathode.

Industry

Light industry is the second most important activity in the local economy, generating approximately 3,100 jobs. A modest industrial park north of the town comprises an area of 53 acres (210,000 m²). There are several companies operating as maquiladoras. The most important are "Fullfillment Systems de México", "Stewart Connectors Systems de Mexico", "Datacenter del Norte", "Customer Specific Cables". In other section they have "Fundidora de Cananea, S.A.", a manufacturer of ball mill liners, and "Road Machinery Company de México, S.A."—which all aforementioned companies together provide approximately 600 jobs and are involved in diverse activities, from cable assembly to steel fabrication.

The intent to open a concrete products industrial park north of Cananea was announced in January 2018 by Ing. Glenn Edward Roy E. of "Ferrocret", a conglomerate that shall produce all manner of precast concrete products such as: hydro conduit; walls, floors, and ceilings of affordable housing; drycast concrete pavers; cinder block; concrete railway sleepers. The factories will utilise proprietary fast-cure concrete formulations in combination with the abundant nearly free-of-cost copper slag "escoria"—an aggregate alternative to expensive riverbed-mined gravel. Over one hundred years of mining activities at Cananea have generated huge manmade mountains of copper slag... thereby providing an ideal, low-cost alternative for supplying graded aggregates for inclusion within those various precast concrete products. Precast concrete products manufacturing promises to become a major industry in the region, and one which shall lessen the dependence of the Cananea job force on a local economy that historically solely has been dependent upon the mines remaining open.

Agriculture

Cattle raising is important and there were approximately 16,000 head in the last census.

Farming consists mainly of corn, potatoes, beans, sorghum, alfalfa, barley, and apples. Most of these crops are used for local consumption and cattle fodder. The infrastructure consists of 30 wells, equipped with a system of electrical motors, and 10 kilometers (6 mi) of reinforced canals used for irrigation.