A bourgeois Cuban family of aristocratic origin locks itself into its mansion when the Cuban Revolution comes to power, waiting for the new regime to be overthrown. As time passes, they regress to older and older systems of policital order, from capitalism to feudalism to "primitive savagery."
A young woman from the country has a son from a young man of a rich family. The rich grandfather of the man, owner of the farm, takes the child away to educate him. A few years later the young woman marries a poor farmer. She rejects the child she has with him and only understands she loves him when the rival brothers fight against each other in a duel.
