Plot
17-year-old Colombian girl María Álvarez works in sweat shop-like conditions at a flower plantation. Her income helps support her family, including an unemployed sister who is a single mother. María becomes pregnant by a man she does not love. After unjust treatment from her boss she quits work despite her family's vehement disapproval. On her way to Bogotá to find a new job, she is offered a position as a drug mule. Desperate, she accepts the risky offer, and swallows 62 wrapped pellets of heroin and flies to New York City with her immature friend Blanca, who has also been recruited as a drug mule.
María is almost caught by US customs who are suspicious of her movements. She avoids being X-rayed due to her pregnancy, and they ultimately believe her story that the father of her child paid for her air ticket. The traffickers collect María, Blanca and Lucy another more experienced mule that Maria had befriended during her recruitment. The mules are held hostage in a motel room until they pass all the drug pellets. Fellow mule Lucy falls ill when a drug pellet apparently ruptures inside her. The traffickers cut her open to retrieve the drug pellets. María convinces Blanca to escape with her when the traffickers leave to dump Lucy's body. They abscond with the drugs they have passed.
María has nowhere to sleep and goes to Lucy's sister's house but doesn't reveal to the sister that Lucy is dead. Blanca soon joins her there. Eventually the sister unexpectedly hears of her sister's death and throws them out. Blanca and María make an ageement to return the drugs to the traffickers and receive their money. María uses some of her drug money to send Lucy's body home to Colombia. They are ready to board the plane back to Colombia when María decides to stay in the United States, Blanca returns home alone.
Read more about this topic: Maria Full Of Grace
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)