It is loosely based on the true story of Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, a drug lord and the leader of a religious cult that practiced human sacrifice.

[1][2] Constanzo and his followers, called the Narco-satanists,[3] kidnapped and murdered The University of Texas junior Mark J. Kilroy in the spring of 1989.

Ed meets a bartender named Valeria after being stabbed defending her in a barfight and falls in love with her, while Henry sets Phil up for his first sexual encounter with a prostitute, who is "barely 17".

The captors explain that they follow "some African voodoo" called Palo Myombe and are preparing a human sacrifice (a "gringo", as opposed to the regular Mexican citizens they have been sacrificing) to get the power of Nganga for their drugs to be invisible to the border guards while smuggling them into the US.

The movie ends with a caption explaining that several kilos of cocaine were found in containers along with human hair, over fifty bodies were exhumed from a mass grave at the ranch, Ed and Valeria were questioned after being caught swimming across the river, and that several suspects remain at large.