Once the center of rice trading in eastern Luzon, Rosales became insolvent, thus making the protagonist child a witness to a series of social inequalities,[1] humiliations and tragedies, making him despise his father, the overseer for the wealthy provincial[4] and feudal[3] landowner known as Don Vicente Asperri[4] (Asperri’s illegitimate son, Luis Asperri, became a main character in José’s My Brother, My Executioner[3]) The Philippine revolution brought no changes in the feudal system of the Philippines’ agrarian economy, except for the shift from Spanish to American colonialism.