Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso Lopez, adored by his female patients but despised by his wife and daughters, has a burning ambition: to prove to the world that the heroic tale of Simon Bolivar, the so-called Liberator of Latin America, is a sham and a scandal.
In Pasto, South Colombia, where the good doctor plies his trade, the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents is dawning. It is a day for jokes and pranks; water bombs, poisoned empanaditas, ground glass in the hog roast-anything goes. To put an end to the cult of El Libertador, Lopez devises an elaborate stunt involving a carnival float on the day of The Black and White Carnival, hoping to lay bare the massacres, betrayals and countless deflowerings that history has forgotten.
But in 1960s Colombia one questions the nation's founding fables at one's peril. At the frenziest peak of the festivities, drunk on a river of aguardiente, Doctor Justo will discover that this year the joke might just be on him.
