Eréndira, a teenage girl, lives with her eccentric, heartless Grandmother Amadis in a vast, gloomy house set in a windswept desert. From dawn to dusk she is pressed into endless chores, while the grandmother drifts through her own world—talking to herself, crying along to sentimental French songs, and acting out wild dreams as she sleeps. The dynamic between them is chilly and controlling, with the grandmother domineering every choice Eréndira makes.
One night, exhaustion finally overpowers Eréndira’s endurance: she falls asleep with the candles still burning as a sudden night wind lashes the curtains into flame, reducing the house to its foundations. Incredibly, both women survive the blaze, but the damage—and the debt it incurs—will bind them even tighter.
To settle the debt for the destroyed home and belongings, the grandmother devises a chilling remedy: the only way for Eréndira to repay such a vast sum is through prostitution. Eréndira submits without protest, and the grandmother does not waste time trafficking her virginity to a seedy local merchant for 250 pesos and three days’ provisions. When Eréndira resists, the man resorts to slaps and rape, underscoring the grim power imbalance at the heart of their arrangement.
Thus begins a desert odyssey in which Eréndira is passed along to a succession of men—peasants, Indians, humble workers, soldiers, and smugglers—while the grandmother collects the money, administers the operation, and pays the workers. The venture grows into something carnival-like, drawing in hangers-on, vendors, musicians, and a mysterious photographer, all orbiting around this troubling economy of exploitation.
After a spell of many encounters, Eréndira’s luck shifts when Ulises, the smuggler’s young son, slips into her tent while the grandmother sleeps. She finds him intriguing, charges him for her services, and even teaches him how to make love. By morning, Ulises has fallen in love with her, injecting a new, complicated emotional thread into the exploitative dynamic.
Their world is upended when monks abduct Eréndira, seeking to rescue her from predation and move her to their desert mission, where other young girls are imprisoned. The monks insist on purifying the girls by forcing marriages, and the grandmother, ever calculating, oversees a scheme to regain control: she arranges for a Mexican peasant boy to marry Eréndira, frees her, and then resumes her sexual servitude. To shield the enterprise from the church’s grasp, she schemes to obtain a letter attesting to Eréndira’s high moral character and sends Eréndira to Senator Onésimo Sanchez, a dying man, with a chastity belt that cannot be unlocked until the letter is written.
The business falters again when Ulises returns and convinces Eréndira to run away with him, dreaming of a freer life sustained by diamonds hidden in oranges carried by his Dutch father. They flee in a truck, pursued by the police, the grandmother, and Ulises’s father. A photographer is shot by a police officer, and the grandmother accuses the officer of complicity. When they are eventually caught, the grandmother chains Eréndira to a bed to prevent further escapes, triggering a cascade of unrest: enraged prostitutes, deprived of their usual competition, rise up and haul the young woman out from under the grandmother’s command.
With wealth finally secured, the grandmother and Eréndira settle by the sea in a lavish tent, where the old woman continues to issue orders, bathe, and play the piano. Yet Eréndira comes to see that freedom cannot be found within this cycle of control and money; the only escape is the grandmother’s death. She goads Ulises into killing the old woman. After two failed attempts—poison and an explosion—the young man finally stabs the grandmother in the back. With her death, Eréndira’s palm bears fresh lines, and she seizes the grandmother’s vest of gold before fleeing back into the desert, leaving Ulises in tears. In a closing voiceover, she declares, > No voice on earth could stop me, and no trace of my misfortune was ever found.
