Images of Arguedas as a child are interspersed with contrasting testimonies from a mine worker and a priest about the Chitulla and Santa Bárbara hills; for the former, they are alive, for the latter, they are merely myths. The same worker recounts a catastrophe that occurred years earlier during a mining operation, revealing that Chitulla “does not want to be opened.” After we see another priest teaching peasant children how to make the sign of the cross, we hear the narrator's voice asking: “Has the Christian cross truly conquered our fearsome hills, or do the wamanis, the mountain-gods, still live on, those still venerated by the people of the Andes?”