It’s a blazing hot Monday afternoon, the temperature topping 110 degrees in the deserts of southern Arizona, and Maria Rodriguez is on a mission of mercy. She’s delivering a huge load of dog food to the Mexican border town of Sasabe, Sonora.
By her count, some two hundred and fifty stray dogs roam the streets hunting for whatever food they can find to stay alive. The town itself has largely been abandoned. Shootouts between cartel factions fighting to control smuggling routes into the U.S. have reduced the population of almost a thousand people to about fifty, in Maria’s rough estimate.
The trouble began last October. The fighting was so intense that residents grabbed a few valuables and left as fast as they could. Months of quiet led some to trickle back, but more gunfire erupted in late May and they left again. [See also previous AT piece on Sasabe here -ed.]
“Sasabe’s basically a ghost town,” says Maria, who for safety reasons asked that her real name not be used. “But when people fled for their lives, they left their dogs behind.”
Feeding the dogs of Sasabe is deeply personal for Maria Rodriguez, a way of soothing the heartbreak she feels at what’s happened to her hometown. She was born there and remembers it as a happy place where kids played in the streets, families all knew one another and parents didn’t worry for their kids’ safety.
But in 2005, with the danger from cartel activity increasing, Maria’s parents moved the family to Tucson, eventually becoming citizens. Maria was eleven.
She does her volunteer work for Paws Without Borders, a Tucson-based 5013c charity founded in 2021 by Kimberly Kelly, a medical anthropologist for a healthcare company. “Paws’ came together almost by accident. Folks doing rescue work in Agua Prieta, Mexico, were struggling to handle a dog in a wheelchair.
“I had experience with that and brought him here to get the care he needed,” says Kelly. “Eventually we found him a home in Canada. I saw there was a lot of need and we got started after that.”
On this Monday afternoon, Maria drives seventy-two miles southwest of Tucson to the border at Sasabe, Arizona. Her toddler sits comfortably in his car seat and the flatbed of her pickup is stuffed with eight hundred pounds of donated dog food.
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Image: Leo W. Banks
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