Following a pleasant childhood, Magda's comfortable world becomes frightening in ways that she has never imagined it could. As her government increasingly turns on its own people in both subtle and overt acts of terror, Magda's family and friends come under threat. Sent to the US for a year of school, Magda realizes how her own passivity has contributed to the fear that now grips her country.

Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, all the way into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.