Douglas
Douglas, Arizona is a small and charming city lying in the Sulphur Springs Valley. The town started as a mining town, smelting the copper from nearby Bisbee, Arizona. The mine closed in 1987, and the town never really recovered.
Douglas has a modest population of around 15,000. The main building in the city’s downtown, which is only a couple of blocks long, is the historic Gadsden Hotel. Small businesses line the few blocks, including Blueberry Cafe and The Last Supper Museum.
As the new mayor, José Grijalva has big plans for the city. He wants to revitalize downtown, and add more recreational programming for the residents. Soon, he will dedicate downtown as a “Purple Heart District” in honor of the many veterans that have called Douglas home. The plan includes putting purple lights for the streetlights and planting trees that have purple flowers.
The culture of Douglas goes deeper than just the people living there, though. Douglas has a sister city of Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico just down the road and across the U.S.-Mexico border. The Raul Hector Castro Port of Entry is one of the busiest border crossings in the state; with an average 9,906 crossings a day in 2023.
The two cities have a symbiotic relationship where both support each other. “If we succeed, Agua Prieta succeeds,” said Grijalva. Residents of Agua Prieta account for 70% of the sales tax in Douglas, and the city sends emergency services, like fire trucks, across the border when needed.
Rosie Mendoza who works for Chiricahua Community Healthcare, has lived and worked in Douglas and Agua Prieta since she was 18. She has a soft spot for these two communities, “This is one city; it has two names, two cultures, two landscapes, and a fence in the middle. We did not hop the fence – the fence hopped us,” said Mendoza.
Agua Prieta
Just across the wall, Douglas’s sister city Agua Prieta is a growing and thriving community. What could certainly be described as the bigger sibling in this symbiotic relationship, Agua Prieta, in the state of Sonora, Mexico, boasts a population of just under 100,000 residents and is a highway of both migration and everyday traffic between and across the border. Its Spanish name, Agua Prieta, means “dark water” and follows the tradition of the indigenous Opata name of Bachicuy, or “black water,” referring to the historical water sources nearby.
Set in the flat, dry, valley landscape of the Sonoran Desert surrounded by the distant Sierra San Luis Mountain range, Agua Prieta’s straight roads lead away from the border wall that now traces its northern boundary. Both communities are situated in a very unforgiving landscape. The desert atmosphere of the Sulphur Springs Valley can cause a wide range of temperatures throughout each season and day. The landscape is marked by high mountains and contains vast grasslands, home to a range of beautiful plantlife and animals.
Like many Douglas residents, crossing the border can be an everyday occurrence for many Agua Prieta residents, so much so that residents have started to affectionately call the area DouglaPrieta. Miriam Maldonado is a Mission Co-Worker & Community Garden Facilitator at Frontera de Cristo, one of the many organizations that call both cities home. “There are lives here that exist on the border,” she says. “This is a community of visitors; we all visit each other back and forth across the border. It’s the culture.”
Frontera de Cristo works to build relationships and understanding on both sides of the border. The organization was founded in 1984 and today is run by Joca Gallegos and Mark Adams. Frontera de Cristo works to welcome and support migrants on their journeys. They also work with different outside groups to offer immersion programs that allow travelers to experience life in the borderlands, learn more about migration, and the challenges that migrants face.
Visitor visas allow Agua Prieta residents to cross the border to get groceries at the Douglas Walmart, and children attend Douglas public schools. Current laws allow this. At sunset everyday, citizens of both cities can be seen filing through the pedestrian checkpoint and down the sidewalk with school backpacks and shopping bags in hand. Highly contrasting with the militarized U.S. side of the border wall, Agua Prieta’s side of the wall is an inviting, artful space, reflecting the bright community it hems in: the sidewalk alongside the steel border wall is lined with benches that run along the bright murals that etch the steel posts.
The city is home to a growing number of small businesses in colorfully painted buildings that line its streets. Among them is Café Justo, meaning “Just Coffee,” a name that reflects its social and economic mission. “Local coffee farmers are not just farmers; they are entrepreneurs. They harvest their own coffee, but they also bag it, market it, ship it, and sell it,” says Adrian Gonzalez, Café Justo’s director of customer service. The shop offers what they call “seed to cup” coffee from farmers in nearby Chiapas, and baked pastries are sourced from local businesses and community bakers. The profits benefit single mothers and support students pursuing higher education. Café Justo has become a community hub, a space where high schoolers do homework every afternoon and local churches host weekly Bible studies.
Just across the street from Café Justo, Lirio de los Valles (Lily of the Valley) Presbyterian Church boasts a tight-knit, intergenerational congregation. Agua Prieta has a robust religious community; faiths of many denominations are the lifeblood of much of the city’s community interconnection. Lirio de los Valles’ church members, connected by both familial and faith ties, often host potluck lunches after their Sunday services, and celebrate birthdays together.
From local commerce to weekly church, neighbors on both sides of the wall share community, culture, and family ties despite the wall that cuts between the sister cities. The relationships within this border community reflect an organic, reciprocal, and symbiotic partnership between Douglas and Agua Prieta—one that transcends borders.
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This story is pulled from the experiences of Queens University of Charlotte’s annual Border Immersion class, which takes a group of students to the U.S.-Mexico border every year. This year’s group of students visited Douglas-Agua Prieta in March of 2025 to learn about immigration and experience border communities.
Queens University News Service stories are prepared by students in the James L. Knight School of Communication with supervision and editing from faculty and staff. The James L. Knight School of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte provides the news service in support of local community news.s.
