La Roca Restaurant and Bar

This is the first of a series of pieces I wrote, reflecting on my time at the Conference “Common Ground on the Border” and in southern Arizona.

Visiting a nice restaurant seemed a strange way to end the Nogales field trip to visit migrants, asylum seekers and deportees in Mexico. Sure, it was past lunch time and I was hungry. Maybe a taco stand would have been more appropriate. But La Roca Restaurant and Bar it was.

The place got its name from the rock grotto that forms one side of the dining room. The carved stone arched up to a high ceiling where massive wooden joists held up the roof. Night blue walls cast the room a somber light, and dark amber woodwork of the doors and windows further added to an ambiance of history that probably never happened. Continue reading “La Roca Restaurant and Bar”