West of the Rio Grande, the border ignores nature. . . . Like retribution for imposing distinctions where none should exist, the faint delineation between Old and New Mexico beyond Juárez and El Paso is one of the border’s more violent excesses
--Alan Weisman
Many groups of revolutionaries arrived at Palomas: Some fighting, others seeking funds for the cause. First the Tomoches or tomochitecos at the end of the nineteenth century. Later Víctor L. Ochoa . . . and other revolutionaries realized Palomas to be an important site, not for the size of its population but because it was on the border and it was in the possession of North Americans, always defended by the military.
—Ramón Ramírez Tafoya, Cronista in La Ascensión