Sam Quinones

Looking back, people say they didn’t much notice the two men – one fat and one thin – lurching along the unpaved roads in their gray 1980 Chevrolet pickup early on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 24. Like most days in Huejutla, Hidalgo that time of year, it was hot, the humidity oiling in sweat anyone who happened to be out of doors. Jose Santos (left) and Salvador Valdez (right) in a Hidalgo jail this spring. These traveling stamp salesmen were falsely accused of kidnaping in rural Mexico. Photo by Jorge Muedano Huejutla’s working-class Lopez Mateos neighborhood is made up of humble concrete-block homes and unpaved streets jammed crudely onto a hillside. The neighborhood is one where who owns the land is a question that can’t always be easily answered. Residents make any improvements, chipping in to install things like electricity because the city hasn’t stretched services to the area. There’s no drainage or public transport. When it rains, people walk to work in knee-deep water. A few mom-and-pop stores are what most people rely