They fell asleep in the street, next to a wheelchair, after spending hours asking for help. A photograph taken without waking them did the rest.
The scene was immortalized in the center of Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, at the intersection of Sexta and Bravo.
A woman and a blind child moving into a wheelchair had spent many hours at that point asking for support for passing people.
First under the sun.
Then, with the passing of hours, until the arrival of the night.
At some point fatigue had the best.
The two fell asleep right there, where they had spent the day.
Someone saw them.
He didn't wake them. He took a photograph.
That image then began to circulate on the city's phones and social media, attracting attention to a situation that until then many passersby had probably only noticed for a few seconds.
According to the local level, the photograph also came to the attention of the DIF of Matamoros, the public body that deals with assistance and support to families.
The case would have been examined to assess possible forms of aid, including economic support and resources necessary for the purchase of medicines.
Their names were not yet known in the story accompanying the spread of the image.
And perhaps this is one of the aspects that make it more reflective.
During the day two people were among the many who asked for help in a busy street.
It was necessary to see them asleep, overcome by fatigue, because their situation suddenly became impossible to ignore.
A photograph does not solve poverty and solidarity on social media does not replace concrete intervention.
But that time an image did at least one important thing: it turned two people who risked being invisible in people whose situation someone began to take care of.
Because no one should get to the end of their forces before they are seen.