Comala, Western Mexico. July 1969. We are at the height of the space race, a few weeks away from the arrival of man on the moon.
SIMON is a down-and-out journalist who by day writes tabloid stories for the local newspaper and by night waits tables at the diner owned by his wife MARY. Simon is competing for the position of columnist at a prestigious newspaper in Guadalajara. All he has to deliver is a story that shows his talent, but he has nothing but notes about ghost ships and extraterrestrial skulls...
At a dinner with friends, Simon accidentally hears a rumor that could bring him not only the job as a reporter, but also the success and fame he has dreamed of since he was a child: Neil Armstrong is Mexican and was born in "Llano Grande", a small town in southern Jalisco. Impulsive as he is, Simon decides to go after the story.
PEDRO, Simon's inquisitive father, calls his plan naïve; MARY, eight months pregnant, just wants her husband to get the job and come back soon to help her with the diner. Three days later, Simon arrives in Llano Grande in the plane of CARLOS, his partner in crime. They both face the opposition of DON ENRIQUE, the municipal president, the mysterious PADRE RAYMUNDO and the town's inhabitants, who are suspicious of their intentions, so they try by all means to hide information about a certain "Güero" who emigrated to the U.S.A. as a child.
Soon, Simon discovers correspondence between JUANITA and her son Güero, presumed astronaut, where he signs with a brief "N.A." (Neil Armstrong!), so he steals them to write the chronicle that will give him not only the position of chronicler, but the Pulitzer Prize and worldwide fame.
Simon is caught fleeing with the letters and is exhibited before the whole town as a thief. Once locked up, Father Raymundo shows Simon another packet of letters that contain, he says, the other part of the story, the really interesting one. But to get them, Simon must stop thinking only of himself and learn that, as the Bible says, shortcuts taken in haste lead to failure.