Tucson, Ariz. – When Dora Rodriguez talks, everyone in her audience listens intently. She’s not loud. In fact, people sometimes have to lean in to hear her clearly. But her words, calm and caring, pull people in. She captures people’s attention as she discusses what has been happening at the border for decades.
Rodriguez intimately understands the dangers of crossing the border, as well as the dire circumstances that lead people to make the journey north. She almost died in the desert in July of 1980 while crossing through the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona.
She was 19 years old that summer when she crossed the border with 25 other migrants and four guides. Thirteen of the migrants did not survive, she said. It’s a story long forgotten, that is, until this year, when she published her book, “Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain,” in which she details her life and that summer in the unforgiving Arizonan desert…