"We're laying in the gutter but staring up at the stars." Santino lives in la villa miseria; the infamous Villa 31 slum of Buenos Aires. Sustained by the drug trade, Santino dreams of a brighter day and a better life elsewhere, with his bright, lettered girlfriend Elisa and young Paco, to whom he is a de facto big brother and guide. With the respect of the slum kids, among them Rolando the harelip whom he has sworn to protect, and bearing the heavy burden of conscience, Santino tries to escape the life to which circumstance condemned him, confronted by the evil atmosphere of poverty, the malice of man and the awful despair of the slum. The Boy from Buenos Aires is determined that his dreams are not mere flights of fancy, amid the joys and sorrows of life in the barrio where he was born yet in which, with every fibre of his being, he refuses to die.