Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha leaves his hometown with wounded pride after Clara, the woman in whom he had placed his hopes, accuses him of being a liar upon discovering that the stone he gave her was not a genuine emerald. Later, in the Muzo mines, he finds a real gem. Instead of giving it to the woman he had idealized, he uses it as capital to purchase his first shipment of marijuana in Colombia’s La Guajira region and enters the drug trade.