Tres Patas, named for only having three legs is the adopted dog at the Casa de la Esperanza Resource Center in Sasabe, Sonora. Since the center had to close due to cartel violence, Tres Patas is one of the many dogs left behind.The population of the town of Sasabe, Sonora, have nearly all fled the small border community due to cartel violence ravishing the town. An informal coalition has formed to get food to the few families left in the town and the dozens of abandoned pets.
Dora Rodriguez watched at the beginning of November as people came down the hill from a cut in the border wall to the store in Sasabe, Arizona, to wait for Border Patrol so they could request humanitarian parole.
The co-founder of Casa de la Esperanza Resource Center, helping asylum seekers, migrants, and the local community in Sasabe, Sonora, until it recently had to close due to the violence, recognized the community members that she and her organization had been helping — women crying with their children in their arms, a 17-year-old girl who had to leave her wheelchair behind, the artist who had been helping build a community library.
Rodriguez says from a population of about 25-hundred, only about 30 families remained in the town. The ones who fled had no choice but to leave everything behind.
“And that’s why we have so many, many abandoned dogs in that town, and cows and horses and cats,” Rodriguez said. “And these people are suffering. That’s their pets, but they couldn’t bring them with them.”
Rodriguez and other volunteers are collecting donations at salvavision.org to get food for the animals and people who are still in the town.
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