When I Want to Cry, I Don't

Narrative Synopsis

In Venezuela, one day in 1948 there were born three children all named Victorino: Pérez, mulatto and son of the poor Lucía; Perdomo, son of a middle-class communist who gets arrested; and bourgeois Peralta. On the day of his eighteenth birthday Pérez escapes from prison using lather pretending it to be a rage attack. Peralta shows a friend of his a car he got from his parents. A young lady gives herself to Perdomo as a birthday present. Pérez finds his mistress with another man and wounds her. Pérez and a few others rob an old man while riding on their motorcycles. Perdomo and a bunch of bushwhackers plan to rob a bank. Pérez sees a friend of his smoking pot while Peralta visits a cousin of his and has sex with her. Perdomo’s father, recently elected a communist representative wants to talk him out of his violent ways. Pérez sleeps with three girls and remembers how he once killed a man in the middle of a robbery. Peralta and his friends shoot dogs just for fun. Perdomo and his pals…