A man is serving a four-month sentence in the Starr County jail without having committed an actual crime. He is being held in civil contempt for refusing to stop fighting for an inheritance that the courts ruled he had no right to claim because he is adopted. If this story wasn’t true, it would be absurd. STARR COUNTY, 1943 This story begins in 1943. The United States was in the middle of the second world war, and many young men in the country, including in Starr County, were getting ready to serve. In that year, Maria Lopez viuda de Pena, or La Tia Maria as she was known, made her final Will. La Tia Maria never had children, but she raised her nephew Santiago, and she loved him as if he was her own son. Santiago was 19 years old in 1943, and he was drafted to fight in the second world war. And, it was in this historical context that La Tia Maria made the fateful decision that caused a series of events that landed Santiago’s son in the Starr County Jail 82 years later....