Después del Terremoto's theme concerns a Nicaraguan working as a maid in San Francisco. The plot is propelled by an impending meeting between the film's protagonist, Irene, and her boyfriend, who has just arrived from Nicaragua where he has been a political activist, imprisoned and tortured in Somoza's jails. Yet apart from this specificity which localizes the theme as "Nicaraguan," or the film as a story about Nicaraguans in the U.S., the film's various subtexts can be read allegorically. And it is the manner in which the film is formally structured which opens up its allegorical dimension.