Riveting River Entertainment

Synopsis

What was their crime? They refused to join the cartel.

Imagine watching your hometown fall deeper and deeper into the hands of ruthless, heavily armed cartel thugs, until even the police are working for the cartel. You see severed heads of guys you once knew impaled on spikes in the park where you once had family gatherings. You eek out an existence in the shadows, trying not to be noticed, until the day you’ve been dreading finally arrives: the day you are told that if you don’t join the cartel, it will be YOUR head on a spike. But you don’t want that life – you don’t want to be a murderer. You refuse, even though it means death.

Now you’re on the run. Nowhere is safe. And it’s not only you but your entire family that’s now in danger. That’s when you have to decide your fate. That’s when you announce: “If I have to choose between joining the cartel and death… then I choose America!”

You and your cousin hide in the trunk of a car going north. In the ancient Aztec region, north is the direction of darkness, the path to Mictlán, the Land of the Dead. Are you awaiting death in America? Or are you already dead? These are your thoughts as this surreal nightmare adventure unfolds. Imagine you’ve had to ride for hundreds of miles in the trunk of a car, only to arrive at a hot, dusty border town teeming with hundreds of people who, just like you, are trying to escape the violence. The border is a kind of purgatory, and only those with the right amount of cash can proceed. You find another way… a path less known, but more dangerous. It means wandering in the desert for days without food, and fighting off hallucinations and despair. But you still have hope.

You find a road where a man in a new white pickup offers you a job on a ranch. But when you get there, you find it is a slave labor camp surrounded by an electric fence. You work at gunpoint. You discover a dead body. You witness planes bringing drugs to the ranch. You can’t sleep because of nightmares. A miracle happens: a once-in-a-decade lightning storm gives you the chance to escape! With Valente, a fellow inmate, and a ferocious guard dog whom you’ve befriended, you and your cousin form a team, and ride in a boxcar to San Antonio! But local gang members are already there and they are looking for you.

Imagine your dismay when you realize that the same cartel that destroyed your hometown is also set up in San Antonio, El Paso, and Houston – as well as cities all over America! Slavery is not dead, but has been reinvented by the cartel and its American allies. You’ve made a terrible mistake – you assumed that cartels only operate in Mexico! You are being hunted – not only by the cartels – but by immigration as well. Everywhere you turn ICE officers are grabbing people like you. You run harder and faster than ever, searching for America!