A politically charged film, where a series of archetypal characters are presented.

1964, in a Latin American country, a journalist is head of an armed liberation movement that decides to initiate radical actions. His second in command, a farmer, and the other members of the group will kidnap a north american colonel stationed in Venezuela to force his government to suspend the execution of the vietnamese Nguyen Van Troi, accused of trying to assassinate the American Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.

Exiled Chilean director Patricio Guzmán filmed in Cuba and in Venezuela to create this controversial statement on the creation and survival of Latin American culture from the late-15th century to the present. For some viewers, the film will be superficially symbolic and rhetorical, for others, it will be a strong and personal vision of several centuries of history.