Tis the Season for Solidarity

Support Local Border Journalism and Artisans from Sasabe, Sonora.

By Melissa del Bosque & Todd Miller

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December 5, 2024

The Border Chronicle has the perfect gift for friends and family this holiday season. A special edition hand embroidered Border Chronicle tote bag. We have only eight of these beauties, which you won’t see anywhere else!

For the first eight subscribers who become a founding member of The Border Chronicle for $150, we’ll send you one of these fabulous tote bags. With your founding member subscription, you will also receive two annual paid subscriptions for friends and family, and we will send them a nice gift note. In addition, 25 percent of the proceeds from each founding member subscription will go to the group of women who embroidered these amazing tote bags.

Another look at these awesome hand embroidered tote bags.

If you’re a longtime reader of The Border Chronicle, you will be familiar with Casa de la Esperanza, a migrant resource center in Sasabe, Sonora, that was founded by humanitarians Dora Rodriguez and Gail Kocourek and several women in Sasabe, who ran the center. Unfortunately, due to cartel violence in Sonora, the center was forced to close and has yet to reopen as the situation there is still volatile. Some of the women in Sasabe have had to flee their homes, while others are hunkered down in Sonora hoping for peace.

Women embroidering bags at Casa de la Esperanza in Sasabe, Sonora, in 2023 before the center closed due to cartel violence. (Photo credit: Melissa del Bosque)

Many of you Border Chronicle readers and listeners will also be familiar with Dora Rodriguez’s Tucson-based humanitarian organization, Salvavision, which assists asylum seekers and people migrating at the border.

In addition to becoming a founding member and supporting local independent journalism, The Border Chronicle encourages you to donate items and give to Salvavision this holiday season. Dora and other volunteers are doing important work at the border helping people in need. Through Salvavision you can also request to have jackets, bags and other items embroidered which will help these women and their families in Sasabe during these tough times.

Happy holidays and abrazos from Tucson!

Melissa & Todd

Founders, The Border Chronicle

Some of the bags embroidered by the ladies in Sasabe displayed at Casa de la Esperanza in 2023. (Photo credit: Melissa del Bosque)

Authors

Melissa del Bosque

Melissa del Bosque is Co-founder and Executive Director of The Border Chronicle. Melissa has written about the U.S.-Mexico border since 1998 for various media outlets, including ProPublica, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Texas Observer, and The Intercept.

Her work has been recognized with numerous U.S. and international journalism awards, including a Gabo Award and the Internacional Rey de España de Periodismo award, as the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports. In 2020, del Bosque received the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award as part of a ProPublica group reporting project “Inside the Border Patrol.” In 2016, she received the Hillman Prize for her investigative feature “Death on Sevenmile Road” about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2015, del Bosque’s four-part series with The Guardian on migrant deaths in South Texas won an Emmy and a National Magazine Award.

Del Bosque is also the author of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty. She has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s in Public Health from the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health, and a Bachelor’s in poetry and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

In her spare time, Melissa loves to travel, spend time with her family, and explore the Sonoran Desert.

Todd Miller is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Border Chronicle. He is the author of four books that examine border militarization and its externalization, surveillance technology and industry, climate change, and the search for alternatives. His books include Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021) Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019), Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).

Todd’s forthcoming book is a deep examination of water as a border issue in an age of climate-induced heat waves and drought. It will be published by Seven Stories Press in 2027.

Besides The Border Chronicle, articles by Todd have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, TomDispatch, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. He has also authored and co-authored reports on border surveillance, the border industrial complex, and climate change for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, where he is a fellow.

Todd’s book Storming the Wall received the Izzy Award in 2018 for “path-breaking and in-depth reporting.” He also received first place in “Community immigration reporting” by the Arizona Press Club in 2013. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism from Prescott College, where he is also an adjunct professor.

In his spare time, Todd likes to travel, read, philosophize, and hang out with his two kids—whether it be going to a dance recital or being a basketball coach.