A crime reporter, a lawyer, a failed poet, and a Chinese-Mexican union organizer accidentally discover a plot to divide the oil-producing Gulf Coast from the rest of Mexico. The story is set in 1922 in Mexico City, based around the secret Plan de Mata Redonda, a conspiracy of army colonels, U.S. senators, and oil company magnates, with the aim to separate the oil-rich Gulf Coast of Mexico from the rest of the country and turn it into an American protectorate....