Drugs, prison, and death are just three alternatives faced by children in the street gangs of Latin American and US cities, who wage a daily struggle to survive in the midst of robberies and murder. They form the subject of this film, which maps the life of the gangs Mara Salvatrucha 13 and 18 Street Xv3, rapidly expanding multinational organisations that, with their special brand of cruelty, compete with each other in drug smuggling, weapons sales, and human trafficking.