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Baja Arizona (U.S.)

image by Jean-Marc Merklin, 10 August 2024

Description of the flag

See also:

Description of the flag

I remembered another blue-white-red tricolor flag. I don't know if it's related or if it's a coincidence but it should be remembered that during the Mexican War of 1861, the French were allied with a number of Native American tribes from Sonora, including the Yaquis, the Ocoronis, the Pimas, the Papagos (now Tohono Oodhams) and others. Around 2016, I had presented on FOTW-fb a flag drawn with the French-type tricolor with a saguaro cactus on the white stripe, that I found on a website where it was labeled for "Pima". Someone who lived in the area (Arizona) had replied that he had already seen this flag while he was driving. Yesterday, after searching for this flag through Google Images, I came across a 2011 Forbes article that states that this is(was?) the proposed flag for a wannabe 51st state of "Baja Arizona". Here's the link:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oshadavidson/2011/02/25/will-baja-arizona-become-the-51st-state/
Jean-Marc Merklin, 10 August 2024

Baja Arizona was never taken as a very serious proposal; it has been thrown around as a joke, fun idea, and as a state in less serious alternate history maps, but otherwise that is really it.

I’m thinking the tricolor is there to copy the “red white and blue” of the American flag. I wouldn’t make that much of a connection between the French and natives; the Spanish barely even touched Arizona, much less the French.
Daniel Rentería, 10 August 2024

Agreed, it surely is a coincidence [that it resembles a French flag] but as the origin of the colors are still not so clearly explained, that historic fact needed to be exposed, from my point of view. It may also have been copied from a Texas flag version, or a combination of the American colors on Mexican vertical stripes. The French never reached Arizona but the Yaquis, the Pueblos and many of the "Natives" (not always native of USA) from Arizona and New Mexico traveled to and from Mexico, still often speaking Spanish.
Jean-Marc Merklin, 10 August 2024