Teófilo Alfonso, also known as “Panamá Al” Brown, the first Latin American World Boxing Champion. After a fixed fight costs him his title, he retires to Paris. There, he becomes a sensation in a second-rate cabaret and catches the eye of poet Jean Cocteau, who becomes both his lover and agent. Despite being 35 and battling addiction, Brown agrees to return to boxing to reclaim his lost championship.

The stories of a Panamanian officer who feels betrayed by his superiors, of a young man from the neighborhood trying to prevent his friends from going out to fight, of a fisherman going through a thousand adventures trying to bury his compadre, of an imprisoned American businessman for conspiring as a CIA agent against the dictatorship and an alcoholic prostitute who cannot escape her past ... all in the middle of the Christmas preparations, just as the US invasion of Panama begins.