Pablo knew nothing but poverty, like most of the 250,000 other residents of Heroica Nogales in Sonora State, northern Mexico. Across the barbed wire fencing at the top end of town was the border with Arizona and the American dream.

Nothing summed up the difference in the two worlds like the view from the top of municipal railway building: in the industrial haze to the south a pot-holed highway stretched to the desert, and on the horizon to the north sat a field of red roses in Arizona’s wealthy irrigated farmlands.

Pablo had resigned himself to a life as a linesman, riding the dilapidated diesel trains across Sonora state. That was until someone passed him an envelope containing a folded campaign poster calling for votes for the new governor of Tucson. Staring back at Pablo was an identical portrait of himself