Paco

he story is narrated by the family's eldest son, Paco (Edward James Olmos). The film begins with the father of the family, José Sanchez (Jacob Vargas), making a journey that lasts one year on foot from Mexico to Los Angeles. He travels to Los Angeles to meet a distant relative known as El Californio, who was born in the city when it was still part of Mexico. They become fast friends and grow a corn farm together. However, after several years, El Californio nears death. Shortly before dying, El Californio says he wants the following written on his tombstone:

When I was born here, this was Mexico, and where I die, this is still Mexico.

José meets and marries the love of his life, María (Jennifer Lopez), an American citizen. After María is illegally deported to Mexico by the U.S. federal government in a mass roundup, she makes it back to Los Angeles via a long and arduous trip two years later, where she returns home with their new son Chucho.

Twenty years later in the 1958 or 1959, eldest daughter Irene (first played by Maria Canals Barrera, later by Lupe Ontiveros) is getting married. Chucho (Esai Morales) and Paco (Benito Martinez) have grown up. New additions to the family include Toni (Constance Marie), Guillermo "Memo" (played by Greg Albert as a child, and by Enrique Castillo as an adult), and brother Jimmy (Jonathan Hernandez as a child, Jimmy Smits as an adult).

The film begins to gain momentum after the wedding, when a series of events seal Chucho's fate. One night at a dance hall, Chucho is dancing with his girlfriend, when his rival Butch Mejia (Michael DeLorenzo) starts to bother him. This results in a bloody knife fight between the two, and Chucho accidentally kills him. After this event, Chucho becomes a fugitive by the police. One night when Jimmy is playing ball with his friends, Chucho is shot dead by the LAPD before Jimmy's eyes, other members of the family learn of Chucho's death also, when they hear gunshots and rush to a nearby street, where they all find his dead body. As an ambulance arrives to take Chucho's lifeless body away, we hear Paco narrate how Chucho's fate had been on borrowed time.

The third generation, which takes place another twenty years later in the 1970s, faces situations such as acculturation, assimilation, and past problems of the family.

Jimmy (now played by Jimmy Smits) completes a stint in jail and returns home. It is revealed that after Chucho's death 20 years back, Jimmy became an angry man following in his footsteps becoming a fugitive like him. One day, Toni visits the Sanchez home and stuns her parents with the news that she is no longer a nun and has married a priest named David Ronconi (Scott Bakula). In a telling scene Isabel (Elpidia Carrillo), Jimmy Sanchez's wife (a Salvadoran refugee), whom he married so she wouldn't be deported, comes up to him and changes the music in the cassette-player. She tries to get him to dance with her, on the street. At first he doesn't want to and he's not sure he loves her, but she finally succeeds. He asks her at the end of the song, "Will you teach me how to salsa?" It is here that they fall in love for the first time. This scene serves as a metaphor for the continuation of the Sanchez family.

Soon Isabel becomes pregnant, and when she gives birth to their son, Carlitos, she unexpectedly dies. Enraged, Jimmy attacks the doctor he blames for her death, burglarizes a store, and is jailed, leaving his son to be raised by his parents. When Jimmy gets out of prison, he initially doesn't want anything to do with his son who now has behavior problems. When Jimmy finally sees his son, he is filled with joy and immediately wants to care for him. However, his son hates him. The remainder of the movie primarily focuses on Jimmy's attempts to form a loving relationship with his estranged son. After much conflict,

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