Melquiades Estrada [melËkjaÃ°es esËtÉ¾aÃ°a], a Mexican illegal immigrant working in Texas as a cowboy, shoots at a coyote which is menacing his small flock of goats. A nearby United States Border Patrol officer, Norton, thinks he is being attacked and shoots back, killing Melquiades. Norton quickly buries Melquiades and does not report anything. Melquiades' body is found and is reburied in a local cemetery by the sheriff's office. Evidence that he may have been killed by the U.S. Border Patrol is ignored by the local sheriff, Belmont, who would prefer to avoid trouble with the Border Patrol.
Pete Perkins, a rancher and Melquiades' best friend, finds out from a waitress, Rachel, that the killer was Norton. Perkins kidnaps Norton after tying up his wife, Lou Ann, and forces him to dig up Melquiades' body. Perkins had promised Melquiades that he would bury him in his home town of JimÃ©nez in Mexico if he died in Texas. Perkins undertakes a journey on horseback into Mexico with the body tied to a mule and his captive Norton in tow. It is clear to Sheriff Belmont that Perkins has kidnapped Norton, and so police officers and the Border Patrol begin to search for them. Belmont sees them heading towards the Mexico border, but as he takes aim at Perkins, he can't bring himself to shoot and returns to town, leaving the pursuit to the border patrol.
On their way across the harsh countryside, the pair experience a series of surrealistic encounters. They spend an afternoon with an elderly blind American man (Levon Helm), who listens to Mexican radio for company. The man asks to be shot since there is no one left to take care of him. He does not want to commit suicide because, he argues, doing so would offend God. Perkins refuses as, if he killed the man, he would offend God. Norton attempts to escape and is bitten by a rattlesnake and eventually discovered by a group of illegal immigrants crossing into Texas. Perkins gives one of them a horse as barter payment for guiding them across the river to an herbal healer. She turns out to be a woman whose nose Norton had broken when he punched her in the face a few weeks previously during an arrest. At Perkins's request, she saves Norton's life before exacting her revenge by breaking Norton's nose with a coffee pot.
The captivity, the tiring journey, and the rotting corpse slowly take a profound psychological toll on Norton. At one point the duo encounter a group of Mexican cowboys watching American soap operas on a television hooked up to their pickup truck. The program is the same episode that was airing when Norton had sex with his wife in their trailer earlier in the movie. Norton is visibly shaken and is given half a bottle of liquor by one of the cowboys. Norton's wife is shown as she decides to leave the border town to return to her home town of Cincinnati. She has grown distant from her husband and seems unconcerned about his kidnapping, stating that he is "beyond redemption."
Perkins and Norton then arrive at a town that is supposed to be near JimÃ©nez â the town Melquiades Estrada claimed was his home. No one in the town has heard of JimÃ©nez. Perkins has some luck in locating a woman Melquiades indicated was his wife but, when Perkins confronts her, she states that she has never heard of Melquiades Estrada and lives in town with her husband and children. She does visibly react to Estrada's Polaroid photograph Perkins shows her of Melquiades standing behind her and her children, stating that she does "...not want to get in trouble with her husband." Perkins continues onward searching for Melquiades' descriptions of a place "filled with beauty." Eventually they come upon a ruined house which Perkins feels was the one Melquiades had mentioned. Perkins and Norton repair the walls, construct a new roof and bury Estrada for the third and final time.
Perkins then demands that Norton beg forgiveness for the killing, but Norton responds with obstinacy. Perkins fires several shots from his pistol around Norton until he breaks down and relents, begging forgiveness from Melquiades. Perkins accepts his outpouring of grief and leaves Norton a horse, and in passing calls him "son." As Perkins rides away, Norton calls out and asks him if he will be okay, suggesting that Norton may have found the redemption his wife had felt he was incapable of having.
Who was watching the American soap opera?
Mexican cowboys