This movie is very interesting and complex. It runs through a gamut of humanitarian issues. I though at first this movie was comical but it turns out to be a serious plot with funny aspects. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is about a friendship between an immigrant cowboy named Melquiades (Mel) Estrada and Pete Perkins, a white ranch foreman  in Odessa ,Texas, who hires Melquiades as a ranch hand. Their friendship grew so strong that Melquiades made Pete promise him that if he were to die in Texas, Pete would bury him in his hometown in Jimenez, Mexico. When an arrogant and abusive newly hired border patrol Mike Norton kills Melquiades at the ranch he buries him in the desert so no one would know he killed him. Two men find his body while they are hunting coyotes and they discovery the coyote was eating Melquiades’ body. The county sheriff Frank Belmont of Cibolo, Texas refuses to release the body to Pete because he is not a relative and buries Melquiades in the town cemetery, since the sheriff did not know Mel’s last name , he decides to name him Mel Mexico on his tombstone.  This angers Pete and his journey begins to find out who killed him and take Mel’s body back to Mexico. Pete does find out it was the border patrol Mike Norton and he kidnaps him in order to assist Pete in taking Mel’s decaying body back to Jimenez.

Mike Norton and the sheriff Belmont were racist and discriminatory against Mexican immigrants and treated them with disrespect. In a scene where a group of Mexican immigrants were crossing the desert into Texas illegally border patrol Mike hit a woman for running away and trying to protect her brother. The film showed Mexicans trying to better their lives by looking for work opportunities in Texas and were mistreated by authorities and looked down on. The story of a white man honoring his Mexican friend was very touching and it showed that not all white Americans are brutal and racist. As the film played on and the observer seen the commitment Pete had to Mel and why it was so important to keep his promise. For Mike, although a tough journey he found his redemption in the end and realized that he needed to change with the help of Pete threatening to kill him if he did not say sorry to Mel for killing him. They had traveled through Texas desert on horseback and into Mexico’s mountainous area and found out that the town of Jimenez did not exist and that Melquiades story of a wife and kids were not true. In the end, Pete did find an area that Mel had described as Jimenez and Pete and Mike buried him there.

In Mexico, the natives looked poor and had clothes on that were worn out and the area was desolate, dry and no real farming areas. One can imagine why Mexican’s would make the horrible trip to the United States and risk their lives in the process, it is because if they stayed they would have nothing anyway. They did have a small cantina, a few homes, and old cars that were not working. Poverty there was much more dire there than poverty in the US. This film makes one think about the courage the immigrants have to risk getting brutally beat up by the border patrol or die of thirst because of the treacherous terrains of the desert. When they can make it safely to the city, they are mistreated by people because of the way they look or speak and the stereotypes people in the US have of Mexicans. If the stereotypes are true to an extent, we as a society should think why are they there? Maybe they drink because they have no other coping skills, maybe they are portrayed as lazy because of the heat they do not work mid-day. We need to be more compassionate to other people’s struggles as this film shows Pete being compassionate to Melquiades by offering him a job and forming a friendship.