Carlos Tinoco, 33, appeared next to the side of the congo line as they tried to reach the sheriff about the broken down vehicle a few miles back. The travelers had been following loose rumors about a hippie commune called ‘Star Valley’ from the Gays Mills downtown area. Gays Mills drew the students’ interest because it stuck with Hillary Clinton in a sea of Trump flipping, and they wondered why.

 It turned out to be an apple themed town with a natural foods store and a crop of outsiders who come seasonally into town to pick apples in the multiple orchards that ring the town. In that way, it’s different from the other areas of the Trump Triangle: It’s has more diversity and change.

Tinoco quickly debunked the town’s folklore. He also revealed that he has been an employee at the farm Star Valley Flowers in Soldier’s Grove for 14 years since he first came to the states illegally from Mexico.

According to Census statistics, 81.9 percent of the population in the Gays Mills area is of white descent while 6.6 percent are African American and another 6.6 percent are Hispanic. That might not sound very diverse, except that some of the towns around it are almost entirely white.

Tinoco who lives on the winding, dark hillside on the northern edge of Gays Mills, in Crawford County, helps illustrate this.

With the election over with and several numbers still being accounted for, Despite the numbers and quotations from a handful of residents, Tinoco said he did not experience racism from within the county. He is not able to vote, but he said that his daughter was worried about the effect of Trump’s election on her parents.

The post The Man in the Shadows appeared first on Election 2016: How the Mississippi River Valley Turned Red.