Land and Shade

After an absence of 17 years, Alfonso returns home to be at his son Gerardo’s bedside and help the family he abandoned years earlier. Gerardo has developed a serious lung disease due to the smoke generated by the daily burning of sugar cane fields surrounding the small property. Coldly received by his wife Alicia, the former farmer is welcomed with open arms by his daughter Esperanza and her little son Manuel, whom he has never met.

While Alfonso forms a relationship with the boy, Alicia and Esperanza work in nearby plantations, where employees, frustrated at not being paid regularly, threaten to strike. Despite their onerous lifestyle, Alicia refuses to leave this part of the country that she calls home. To Esperanza’s chagrin, Gerardo also refuses to abandon it, as his father once did.