La India María must find at all costs in the recesses of a mountain the Magic Black Mirror of Tezcatlipoca, since the spirit of his great-grandfather Moctezuma II ordered her to find it in to prevent the destruction of Mexico. Alonso, a handsome Spanish archaeologist, Bianchi, an antiquities dealer and Brigida Troncoso - an ambitious governor, are aware of the existence of such mirror, of the mysterious treasure of Moctezuma and of María, so all undertake a frantic chase after her to seize the magic glass and the gold.

In the spring of 1980, Esther Jochmann, a young Austrian woman, flies to San Salvador. Her husband, a journalist, has been killed. She has to identify his corpse so that the authorities will allow it to be transferred to Europe. She learns that Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was also a victim of an assassination, had granted a taped interview to her husband. Padre Manuel hands the tape over to her. Esther accompanies the Padre and John, an American reporter, who are trying to find the murderers.

Two ditzy dance-hall girls are stranded on a tugboat floating down the big river after a night when all the crew kill each other in an unexplained frenzy.

Margo is an ex-stripper who meets her long, lost father in Mexico. She looks after him in the waning days of his life, with the help of a traveling projectionist. The father passes away, telling of the loot from a botched bank robbery that he buried years earlier. The two get jobs in town as their relationship grows and they search for the treasure on the weekends. But while the treasure seems to bring them together, it also seems to be tearing them apart.