Jacinto, a proud man from a small village in the mountains, travels down to a desert town on the coastal plain of a Spanish-speaking country every year to sell his wares. He does not like the modern lifestyles of the 1940s that the townspeople exhibit. Jacinto vends his goods in the market and smokes marijuana. He often goes to a cemetery by a train station where some of the station workers like to smoke as well. One afternoon, he goes to visit the cemetery. At the station, he sees a group of white, blond foreigners: two women and a man. Jacinto makes eye contact with one of them and assumes she's a prostitute. He goes to the cemetery and lays down to smoke. In the evening, Jacinto decides to go to the hotel in town, where he knows the tourists stay. He waits on a park bench across the street from the hotel. He speaks to one of the women and startles her because she did not see him in the dark. The only light around is from the heat lightning in the sky. The woman says that she is traveling with her married friends, and that they're headed south to the border. After a few minutes, Jacinto gets up and grabs the woman's arm. He tells her that he plans to kill the man and claims to have a pistol in his pocket. He drags the woman to the cemetery and says that she can save her friend's life. There, Jacinto rapes her. The next year, when he comes down to the town from the mountain, Jacinto goes to the cemetery and cries, reminded of the woman. A local woman who visits her son's grave sees him and thinks he cries for his dead mother.