El Gancho: A Saga of an Immigrant Family's Journey out of Mexico

Prudenciano Nava is a Mexican colleador -- a rodeo performer of exceptional skill and strength who flips bulls on their backs by grabbing their tails. A trained horse and agile colleador partner allowed him to escape the deadly horns, and bask in the admiration of the crowd. Nava, scornful of honest labor, has an uncontrollable temper, a weakness for drink, and abandoned his wife. Pursued on horseback, the 49-year old Nava eloped with his brother's 15-year-old stepdaughter, leaving the drudgery of his father's rancho, for riches in Mexico's northern states. But the Mexican revolution explodes, shattering the nation and Nava's dreams. He and his family flee north yet again. During a botched train holdup in New Mexico, Nava nearly kills a man; now he must elude the law and a fearsome Apache bounty hunter. Nava becomes Tereso Minjares and seeks a quiet life. But his lust for fame lures him to run guns for the legendary rebel, Pancho Villa. Ultimately humbled, Tereso never realizes that he was the instrument of the greatest El Gancho (Hook) of all. Because of Tereso's faults and God-given strengths, the Minjares family is brought to a new destiny in Los Estados Unidos. El Gancho, the true stories of an illiterate great-grandfather once taken as a spinner of exaggerated tales, is the experience of real people who endured the hardships of history, and became the foundation of a nation.