A girl grows up under the suffocating Argentine dictatorship, in a society crushed between terrorists and the military government; an involuntary betrayal will mark her life forever.

SYNOPSIS:

(Based on a novel) The action is set in Argentina during the Peronist government and the military dictatorship from 1969 to the early 1980s. The protagonist, a girl whose name is never mentioned, speaks in first person about growing up surrounded by violence under a suffocating dictatorship in a society steeped in indifference. Her middle-class family must cope with economic, political, and existential crises while crushed from both sides by the terrorists and the military government.

From her naïve perspective, the girl observes the changes taking place for her and her parents, who are gradually growing apart. The opening scene shows the girl and her friends in first grade at a Catholic girls’ school bullying another classmate, Clelia, because of an unsightly injury. They see her as different because she still wets herself, and since she has darker skin than her parents they spread rumors that she may be adopted. After a couple of months Clelia moves to a new school but then reappears in the novel ten years later.

With the first terror attacks, dramatic changes occur. The girl’s parents become obsessed with the idea that the terrorist bombs may be anywhere and forbid her and her older sister Ana from living like normal children. Don’t run through those leaves! Don’t ever kick a can or bag you see lying in the street! Don’t tell strangers what your parents’ job is! Don’t trust anyone! The tensions build as her family splits into Peronist supporters and Antiperonists, and when the former win the elections the situation intensifies.

In the meantime, the girl meets a new classmate from the United States and a new world opens up. As the country’s economic situation deteriorates and the terror attacks become more frequent, she dreams about moving with her friend to the USA. Through her eyes we see the coup d’état in 1976, the army breaking into her and her neighbors’ houses, and soldiers deployed in the streets. She dreams about living in a safe, normal place even as so many people around her refuse to admit that their life is anything but normal. After receiving a letter informing her of the death of her American friend and then hearing that another friend is pregnant and expelled from school, the girl must face the unfairness of life, the Church’s lack of benevolence, the existence of desperate poverty, and the cruelty of the world.

She is now 17 and meets a new student at dance class. Later, while looking at a picture of her first-grade class, one of the other children in the photo seems strangely familiar – it must be Clelia, who she used to bully. She invites Clelia to a party, but everything goes wrong when the boys at the party are kidnapped. After a wealthy father pays the ransom, soldiers appear in the field where they are released and one boy is killed in the crossfire.

When the girl is almost 18, before leaving the country to study abroad she meets Clelia’s sister who tells her that her former friend has been killed as well. In the final pages, she returns to Argentina from abroad to attend her father’s funeral. When she comes across a picture of her first-grade class, she tears it to bits and throws it in the river.