It is immediately clear that both women live in dread of the Spanish father, Ciriaco, the commander of the voluntarios (volunteers) of the town.
Ciriaco hates Marcial and looks at him as a traitor to the flag of Spain and a dark-skinned upstart who has dared to fall in love with his daughter.
An infuriated Ciriaco orders them thrown into Marcial's cell, not knowing they were his wife and daughter (they covered their faces).
After the commander leaves, Ciriaco contemplates a dim future for himself and all other Spaniards who, like him, have sought and found their fortunes in the colonies.
But the hardest blow to his Spanish pride is having fallen prisoner to mga ulipon sa España (slaves of Spain).
At this time, the Filipinos were still seething with resentment at the American betrayal of their hopes and the new colonizers were retaliating with restrictions on the freedom of expressions.
Vicente Sotto, also known as Nyor Inting (1877–1950), was a former senator of the Philippines, and considered as one of the greatest Cebuanos of the 20th century.
He was a man of protean accomplishments: "father of modern Cebuano Literature", prolific writer and publisher, pioneering labor leader, renowned lawyer, and quintessential principled politician.
He was called the "most militant and aggressive" of the Filipino advocates of complete and immediate independence in the first decades of the 20th century.
His contemporaries called him the "Great Dissenter", an archetypal political oppositionist who fought for his convictions with little regard of the cost.A fighter of lost causes and "defender of the poor and oppressed", he was one of the most active and best-known criminal lawyers of his time.
The acknowledged "Father" of Cebuano journalism, literature and language, Sotto was one of the leading Filipino intellectuals of the early twentieth century.
Exiled abroad for seven years, disbarred on two occasions and imprisoned five times, few public figures led a more colorful life.