In a remote village in Chile’s Atacama Desert, inhabited by saltpeter workers, a village without a church whose name does not appear on any maps of the region, an orchestra is formed, the Banda del Litro, to entertain the President of the Republic on what is likely to be his first and last visit.
Golondrina del Rosario, the beautiful pianist; Bello Sandalio, the red-haired trumpet player who loved her before fleeing from the police; Sixto, the anarchist barber; and El Diablo del Bombo, who goes mad when his newborn son dies, rehearse with other musicians and each conceive, in their own way, the party that is being prepared in this unknown town of bars and brothels. For some, it will be a new rendezvous with lost love; for others, the hope of ending their misery; for a few, the opportunity for tyrannicide.