Esteban holds strong opinions regarding the "lower classes." He perceives his tenants as "like children, they can't handle responsibility," and is reluctant to allow them to learn beyond basic literacy and numeracy. He fears they might "fill their minds with ideas unsuited to their station and condition." Esteban is blind to the injustice perpetuated by his patron system and fails to appreciate the intelligence of Pedro Segundo, viewing him merely as a competent laborer. In contrast, Clara, with her insightful perspective, recognizes the injustices arising from class disparities. As a child, she discerns the "absurdity" of her upper-class mother lecturing about oppression and inequality to "hard-working women in denim aprons, their hands red with chilblains." When Clara takes Blanca to visit the impoverished, she explains, "this is to assuage our conscience. ... But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice."

The election of the Socialist candidate does little to mitigate class disparities. The upper-class conservatives plot to destabilize the government by creating food shortages. After the coup, food returns to the stores, but the poor remain unable to afford it. Alba observes a return to "the old days when her Grandmother Clara went to the Misericordia District to replace justice with charity." However, the upper class soon discovers that the coup does not reinstate the old class hierarchy; rather, the military establishes a new class. They are described as "a breed apart, brothers who spoke a different dialect from civilians." Esteban Garcia becomes part of this new ruling class, driven by a distorted sense of "justice" fueled by his grandmother Pancha's tales of his heritage. This leads him to torture Alba. Alba realizes that the Colonel's true intention was not to gather information about Miguel, but "to avenge himself for injuries that had been inflicted on him from birth."