The film is a mixture of dramatized and documentary sequences. Miriam is a woman living in a suburb of Bogota who is especially fond of children and who founded a kindergarten that is now subsidized. Miriam tells her story to the audience but the reminiscences of her own childhood - when every pleasure was a sin, when she was chained to a chair and her mother took her to a healer to teach her to smile - are dramatized and performed by actors.