Depending on how you count, California’s Mexican era lasted 24 to 27 years ... the state’s most influential buildings to rise, brick by adobe brick. And it was time enough for a new wave ...

It involves building adobe brick ovens, or hornos, at migrant shelters on the Mexican side of the border. One oven is already up and running at Casa de la Misericordia shelter in Nogales ...

“Oh my god, a community event making adobe. How could you ask for anything ... in the straw-filled mud that would become an adobe brick, prodding the mush into the corners of a wooden mold.