Maria, llena eres de gracia

Seventeen-year-old Maria lives in a small town north of Bogotá with her mother, her grandmother, her sister and her sister’s young son. Maria works on a large rose plantation where she and her friend, Blanca, remove the thorns from the stalks and tie up the roses ready for export. The work is tiring and strict rules apply; the only variety in Maria’s life are the fiestas on the market square she attends with her boyfriend, Juan, on the weekends.
Maria has a spirited, impulsive nature. One day, she gets into a terrible row with her boss and promptly decides to throw in the towel. Maria’s relatives are less than pleased. What they don’t know is that Maria is pregnant. She decides to take her chances in the city; on the way there she runs into an old acquaintance, Franklin, a worldly young man whose cool demeanour impresses Maria. Franklin tells Maria about an interesting job as a courier. It doesn’t take Maria long to work out that the job involves drugs; in this case, tiny packets of heroin that are swallowed by the courier and smuggled into the USA. If she agrees, there’s 5,000 US dollars in it for her. She agrees.
Lucy has already completed two successful smuggling trips; she shows Maria how to prepare her body for the job and what to do if something goes wrong. Shortly after this, Blanca finds herself caught in the clutches of a group of drug dealers. Two days later, the two girlfriends find themselves on an airplane bound for the USA. Maria has 62 little packets of heroin in her stomach …