Baja California, Mexico

Northwestern Mexico is comprised of two states called Baja California Norte (BCN) and Baja California Sur (BCS), i.e., Lower California North and South respectively. This primarily barren peninsula is an 800 mile narrow strip of land stretching from the temperate city of Tijuana, BCN (population 1.5 million) southward to the tropical resort town of Cabo San Lucas, BCS (population 3000) in the south. Both the Pacific and Gulf of California shorelines cover nearly 2,050 miles. The coastlines are decked with numerous uninhabited islands but many of those with permanently available water are occupied at least seasonally by Mexican fisherman. The eastern or gulf side has 25 major islands while the western or Pacific side has only 9 major islands.

Lower California is twice the length of Florida and possesses some 55,000 square miles of extraordinarily rugged landscapes and environments ranging from sea level sand dunes to the forested mountain heights. The physical settings between those two extremes vary and include an array of desert systems, rolling slopes, deep canyons, dormant volcanoes and grand mountain ranges. In the southern and eastern regions where we are concerned with planting churches summers are typically long, hot and humid with temperatures exceeding 100F from June through September. Winters are cool to mild and generally frost free but light snows and frost have occurred as far south as the midriff or central region.

More than a few cities serve as “Meccas” for missionary endeavors on the Baja peninsula including Tijuana, Ensenada, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas due to either their immediacy to the United States, the dependability of certain basic services and or the sheer concentration of peoples. Yet a significant number of Baja Californians live well outside of those urban confines in the rustic surroundings of Lower California. Many of these country folk are called rancheros (ranchers) and pangueros (those who make their life at sea) and have only occasional trade and or interaction with urban areas and urban church planters.

Many of these rural Mexican nationals fuse the lifestyles of ranching and fishing to compensate the meagerness of solely raising livestock in the unpredictable desert environments. Nonetheless, most are consummate fishermen and live their life as sensible itinerants hugging the corrugated coastline of both the Pacific and the Gulf of California in pursuit of the enormous schools of fish. The Sea of Cortez, the original name of the gulf, is often labeled “the world’s greatest fish trap” since its waters are teeming with innumerable quantities of fish including dorado, grouper, wahoo, yellow-fin tuna, black marlin , striped marlin and shell-fish.

The seasonal movements of game fish are rather predictable and have lead to the founding of far-flung, spring fed, fishing camps where the pangueros reside. Some of these fishing outposts take days to reach by four wheel drive vehicles and still others are completely unapproachable by roads and must be reached by boat. The very real seclusion for some of these people is astonishing given the age in which we live and their relative closeness to the United States.

Fortunately, the majority of these countryside pangueros and ranchers are not entirely cut off from Mexican society but their comparative isolation from mainstream Mexico reinforces their poverty, their substandard education and their perceived imperfect social etiquette. These fundamental realities pertaining to the rancheros/pangueros make it very difficult to stir enduring interest among the national pastors of Mexico and or missionary organizations based in urban Baja California, Mexico.

Rev. Byron H. Cobb has personally logged hundreds of hours on the Baja peninsula and affirms that there are literally dozens of these remote fishing camps containing 15 – 40 wandering souls which have no evidence of self-sustainable evangelism much less church planting among them. In an effort to successfully reach the overlooked rancheros/pangueros with the gospel of Christ, Byron Cobb, under the auspice of ASM, has drafted this strategic blueprint with the expressed intent of evangelizing the people and establishing indigenous churches in many of the isolated coves and embayments which dot the nearly 2,050 miles of Baja’s coastline.

Here is a list of a few of the towns & populations located in the midsection of Baja California, Mexico with little or no enduring evangelical church presence: Catavina (120*); Punta Prieta (137); Bahia de Los Angeles (698*); Santa Rosaliita (156); Nuevo Rosario (151); Villa Jesus Maria (385); Morelos (107); Bahia San Francisquito (25); San Rafael (one or two families). Please begin to pray for the inhabitants. (*evangelistic church present). Note: many other small camps and ranches are nestled between the towns listed above.

The Dorado Project’s strategic blueprint calls for its volunteers to engage in deliberate and concerted prayer meetings both stateside and within the Mexican country. The Dorado blueprint necessarily employs intensive investigations into the pangueros periodic or seasonal movements along the shores. These studies will permit ASM and others to locate targeted family groups time and time again in order to forge lasting relationships, follow through with specific inroads which will make possible soul winning, mentoring and finally church establishment.