When twelve-year-old Pedro (Reggie Reyes) is not in school rough-housing with his friends and learning bad examples of relations with the opposite sex, he and his friend Johnny are playing violent video games and carrying their sense of machismo onto the streets (while evading gang members). When a child from the slums tries to steal Pedro's and Johnny's phones with a gun, a struggle ensues and Pedro stabs his attacker in the throat with a broken bottle. His father Andrés (Giovanni García) tries to help the child but leaves him to die in the slums. Fearful of retaliation, Andres drags Pedro with him into hiding. Pedro already has a low opinion of his father who works hand-to-mouth, and the series of jobs Andrés works while attempting to keep Pedro hidden and fed causes his son to grow even more contemptuous of how his father takes ill treatment from his employers. Pedro yearns to return to the neighborhood for news of Johnny's safety, but his puffed-up ego does not allow him to grasp the the severity of his situation and his father's concern for his safety, or even the damage wrought on their old neighborhood by his actions. Whereas the Chilean JÉSUS asks to what extent a father will go to protect his child when "the flesh of your flesh is rotten," the Chilean/Venezuelan/Norwegian LA FAMILIA's pater familias is dealing with a son who thinks that he has grown up in his father's absence, and he still believes that there is hope for him in spite of the pose of a fatalistic outlook about life in the slums and actions that constantly undermine his attempts at doing what he thinks is best for his son.