The Adamses of Nejí

From the Tecate Records, 1 of 3

This story came out of the research for The Paper Trail, which followed the Adams name from Yuma to Tecate. It stands on its own. No record we found ties the family in it to Carlos Adams, the 2026 Yuma mayoral candidate.

On April 24, 2001, a historian from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California recorded an interview at Rancho Nejí, in the hills east of Tecate, with a rancher who gave his name as Andrés Eyraud Adams. The university's catalog calls him Juan Andrés.

He said he was born Feb. 22, 1919, right there, "en esa casa grande que está ahí." In that big house over there.

Somebody in the room said the house was old and falling down. He said it was still theirs. Built in 1918, he said, back when it was the center of the ranch.

It's a great interview. It's also an honest one. The historian asks, the family answers, and a couple of times the family sets her straight.

The Englishman and the Frenchman

Where does the family come from?

"Mi abuelo era inglés," he said. My grandfather was English. His name was Andrés Adams, and "fue el primero que llegó aquí al Rancho de Nejí." He was the first one to come to Rancho Nejí.

Where was the grandfather born? He didn't know. When did he get there? "Pues quién sabe," he said, and laughed. Who knows.

His father, Alejandro Eyraud Yossó, came from France at about 20 and started out herding sheep. His mother was Adelaida Adams. Her parents, he said, were Andrés Adams and María Romero de Adams.

His relative Alejandro Arguiles was in the interview too, and he added one thing: Andrés Adams came from the United States.

The correction

At one point the historian summed it up the way anybody would. Don Andrés was English, she said, so his son Alejandro must have been born in France.

They stopped her.

"No, no, ese era el yerno," Arguiles said. That was the son-in-law. "Mi papá no era hijo de Andrés," the older man said. My father wasn't Andrés's son.

The way they told it, the ranch came down through the women. "Mis abuelas eran las dueñas del rancho," Arguiles said. My grandmothers owned the ranch. The men married in and built up the herd.

That moment is worth sitting with. It's exactly the mistake a researcher makes trying to force names into a tree, and exactly the correction a family makes when it knows its own history better than the paperwork does. The Paper Trail spent a lot of time on the researcher's end of that.

Ranch life

The rest of the interview is about work: cattle brands, ear notches cut so you could tell your animals apart when herds mixed, driving cattle to the rail line to ship north, wintering the herd somewhere warmer because Nejí got snow. A French friend of his father's, visiting from Los Angeles, took a photo at the ranch in 1928.

And this, about where the cattle wintered: "acá había un terreno nacional y mi papá rentaba ahí al gobierno." There was national land over there, and my father rented it from the government.

That line has an echo in the federal record. In February 1953, Mexico's official gazette published a declaration that a tract in Tecate, requested by an Alejandro Eyraud Sr., was national property, with lands of Agustín Eyraud and Aurelio Adams on its west side. Is that the same Alejandro? The notice doesn't say. The names fit. So does the memory.

The hard part of the story

Not every memory in the transcript is a gentle one.

Arguiles told the story of a French ancestor on his own side of the family, Bernardo Arguilez. In his telling, Bernardo ran sheep around San Francisco until American ranchers pushed him out, came south, and found a ranch at Las Juntas that "era de indios," belonged to Indigenous people. He "bought" a Native woman from the chief for five horses and five dollars, married her, then sent her away with their child once he controlled the land, and drove the Indigenous people off.

That's one descendant's account, told generations later, about a different family line than the Adamses. Nobody corroborated it. It still matters: it's how Kumiai land became ranch land, told by a rancher's descendant, in his own words. A relative in the room remembered the family feeding Native people who lived near the ranch. Both stories are in the transcript. Neither one is the whole truth.

The Kumiai community

Nejí is also home to the community those ranchers shared the valley with. Juntas de Nejí is a Kumiai community, the people called Kumeyaay on the U.S. side of the line. A 2008 study by anthropologists Lynn Gamble and Michael Wilken-Robertson describes it as a Kumeyaay community recognized by the Mexican government, and mentions a Juan Adams from Neji East who once worked with an earlier anthropologist. As far as anything shows, that's not the rancher from the interview. The name just shows up on both sides of the valley.

The historian who did the interview, Leticia Bibiana Santiago Guerrero, wrote it in one line in a 2008 article: "los Adams se establecieron en Nejí." The Adamses settled in Nejí.

Where the name goes next

In 2020, a Kumiai water defender from Nejí named Óscar Eyraud Adams was shot and killed in Tecate. He carried both names from that 2001 interview. His story is next: 'Sin agua no podemos hacer nada'.

That same year, Tecate's mayor, Olga Zulema Adams Pereyra, told ZETA that Óscar was a distant relative and talked about Adams relatives in Nejí. She didn't name a common ancestor.

That's three Adams lines in one corner of Baja California: ranchers, a Kumiai community and a political family. Same name, and no record showing where the branches meet. Maybe they do. People who share a valley for generations usually share more than a name. But a surname is a reason to go looking. It isn't a family tree, and you can't read anybody's identity off one.

The scorecard

Verified

• The 2001 interview exists, and the quotes are what the family said.
• The 1953 federal notice about Alejandro Eyraud Sr.'s land.
• Juntas de Nejí is a Kumiai community recognized by the Mexican government.

Not verified

• The family's recollections, as civil records. No birth, marriage or land records were found.
• The Bernardo Arguilez story.
• Whether the 1953 Alejandro Eyraud is the father in the interview.
• Any documented link between the Nejí Adamses, the former mayor's family or the Yuma candidate.

Our read

• The best thing in this archive might be two men in 2001 telling a historian she had their family wrong, and being right.

Next from the Tecate records: 'Sin agua no podemos hacer nada'

Where this comes from

• UABC oral history PHO-8-20, interview with Juan Andrés Eyraud Adams and Alejandro Arguiles Eyraud, Rancho Nejí, April 24, 2001, by Leticia Bibiana Santiago Guerrero. Repository. Recorded testimony. Translations are ours.
• Diario Oficial de la Federación, Feb. 28, 1953, declaration on land requested by Alejandro Eyraud Sr. PDF. Official record.
• L. Bibiana Santiago Guerrero, "Coyunturas históricas de Tecate," 2008. PDF. Scholarly source.
• Gamble and Wilken-Robertson, "Kumeyaay Cultural Landscapes of Baja California's Tijuana River Watershed," 2008. PDF. Scholarly source.
• Global Witness, 2021, Norma Adams Cuero's account. Report. Testimony.
• Gatopardo, Aug. 10, 2021, and Pie de Página, Sept. 26, 2020, on Óscar's birthplace and grave. Reporting.
• ZETA, Sept. 26, 2020. Article. Reporting.