Summary

Here's part of my review for a class I'm taking. Hi Mr Ortiz if you find this. Here's the video I watched with subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1uyJUa1o8

The leader of the group is a teenager named El Jaibo, who recently escaped from reform school, and whom the younger boys look up to. In the beginning of the film, he instructs some of the boys to steal money from an elderly blind man singing in the town square for coins. Later, he and one of the younger boys, Pedro, go to visit a young man named Julian, whom El Jaibo believes ratted him out and is the reason he went to jail, at his job at a factory. While Pedro goes to get Julian, El Jaibo puts his arm in a scarf as a make-shift sling. In the sling, he conceals a rock. Together they confront Julian, who claims innocence. While turned away, El Jaibo takes his opportunity and hits Julian with the rock, and then beats him with a stick.

El Jaibo pulls some money off Julian’s body and gives some to Pedro. They leave believing him to be unconscious, but he is dead. A day or so later they hear news that Julian’s dead body has been discovered in a ditch at the factory. El Jaibo instructs Pedro to keep his mouth shut, because they can’t take back Julian’s death, and Pedro is an accomplice to his murder because he took some of his money. The two part with the agreement not to talk about this to anyone.

Pedro’s mother openly resents him and never shows him any care or love which he longs for. After Julian’s murder, Pedro vows to turn himself around, and takes an apprenticeship at a local blacksmith to earn money to give his mother. One day while he is at work, the owner of the blacksmith leave to run an errand and El Jaibo pays him a visit. He tells Pedro that the police are looking for Julian’s murderer and are questioning people. As Pedro looks out the window, worried about his boss’ return, El Jaibo pockets a silver-handled knife that the boss had been working on. After El Jaibo and Pedro leave, his boss notices the knife missing, and alerts the police.

Upon arriving home, Pedro hears the police questioning his mother. He runs away, but comes back a couple days later. His mother tells him she spoke to the police, and has arranged for him to go live at a farm home. He is angry to be forced to live there, but agrees so as to be seen as agreeable to his mother. He has a hard time adjusting to the farm home, and holds a lot of resentment and anger. He lashes out and kills two chickens by beating them with a stick. The master of the farm home sees Pedro struggling, and decides to show him that the farm home isn’t that bad by entrusting to him 50 pesos to run an errand.

While running the errand, he runs into El Jaibo, who steals the money. They get into a fistfight and Pedro gets beat up. The silver-handed knife falls from El Jaibo’s pocket from the tussling. In front of a crowd of onlookers, he shouts at El Jaibo as he runs away, that he was the one who killed Julian. The elderly blind man from the beginning hears this, and goes to tell the police.

That night Pedro, armed with the knife, goes to where El Jaibo is staying to kill him. Pedro steps on a chicken and the noise wakes up El Jaibo. They struggle, and El Jaibo kills Pedro. He runs off. The poor farmer who’s barn El Jaibo had been staying in find Pedro’s body. Afraid of being incriminated in the murder, they wrap his body and take it to a garbage-filled cliff and throw him down it. As they go to the cliff, they pass by Pedro’s mother, out looking for her son. Alerted by the blind man, the police find El Jaibo. He turns to run, and is shot and killed.