In the Mexican-Guatemalan border, young teenage lovers, Sabina and Jovany, both Hondurans, accidentally meet again after some years without seeing each other. She plans to get to the United States and dreams about being a great singer; he commits all the required atrocities to be accepted by the gang: la Mara Salvatrucha. Sabina and Jovany crashed with the most adverse conditions at the border like white slavery, the Mexican and American migratory agents Burrona and Patrick, the brothel matron Doña Lita, Don Nico the Mexican Consul in Tecún Umán, the drug trafficking networks, the army and la Mara Salvatrucha.

To redeem himself from a great sin, a man dedicates himself to building a church.

When their dad dies on his 55th birthday, Beverley Hills sisters, Mary and Nora, find themselves destitute, forced by a grasping sister-in-law to move in with their aunt in East L.A. Mary, the younger sister, is mortified: spoiled by her dad, ignorant of Spanish, scared of the vatos. Her sister convinces her to finish college, and she promptly decides that one of her T.A.s will be her ticket back to Rodeo Drive. Elder sister Nora, a law student, gets a job as a legal intern, and Edward, her supervisor, the brother of the grasping sister-in-law, promptly falls for her. Slowly, the sisters realize what a rich place the barrio is at the same time that they get bruised in the contact sport of love.