Five communists, one of them a woman, are deported to the Islas Marías, just as the author himself was when he was very young. Along with them are the other unassimilable members of society, perpetual characters in Revueltas's work: prostitutes, homosexuals, and thieves. The crippled men who serve as henchmen complete the anomalous picture in which Revueltas first stages his two commitments: political and literary. Unbounded oppression is countered by boundless faith: that of the protagonists and that of the militant José Revueltas, who thus founded an essential literature in Mexico.