A man and a woman fall in love in the streets of a nocturnal Buenos Aires.

This routine drama set in Argentina during the 1930s draws parallels between a family patriarch and a political despot who stoops to any corrupt means to increase his power and wealth. The parallels are easy to make because the man is the same in both cases. The grandfather in the family has a rigid, tight-fisted control over his grandchildren, who eventually begin to rebel against his authoritarian and ironically puritanical behavior. At first, there is no real awareness of his opposite, criminal behavior outside the home. But as one of the grandsons begins to mature in his political savvy, the grandfather comes under well-deserved fire at last.

In the late nineteenth century, the mule driver Juan Moreira is a good gaucho and worker who, like many others, is subjected to abuse and humiliation by the powerful, either the police or landowners.

Celina can't stand the city anymore. She was born in a rural town and traveled to the great metropolis in search of fortune. Now she returns home after many years. Mauricio Matzkin is a humble businessman who cares for his mother. Hugo, Celina's brother, lives in the suburbs with his father and his ailing mother, now with Celina again. Hugo owes Matzkin money, and Mauricio tries to recover it. And so a story begins.