It is the season of Lent, sometime during the 1830s. Buenos Aires, Argentina's vibrant capital city, has been cut off from the rest of the region by terrible floods that preachers tell their congregations were symbolic of God's anger; the Day of Judgement is coming because of man's wickedness and the chief perpetuators of this wickedness are the supporters of the Unitario party, who are polemically opposed to the ruling Federalist regime led by Juan Manuel Rosas.
There is a meat shortage because the city has been cut off by the floods. The government orders fifty bullocks slaughtered, claiming that the meat will be used to feed the sick, and children, but the reality is that neither group will see any of the meat; it will feed Rosas, and the privileged few groups who are in favor with him, particularly the clergy, who are extremely corrupt.
The slaughter is a vile, barbaric process. Butchers are shirtless and their bodies smeared with the blood of the animals they are killing. Screams come from the animals as they are slaughtered and for the vulture-like birds flying overhead. It is a scene of carnage and debauchery combined; no wonder God is angry.
The Judge of the Slaughteryard runs the entire show. He is appointed by the order of Rosas himself and has power without challenge. There is nobody to keep him in check, and because of this, humanity has vacated the slaughteryard long ago. Forty nine bullocks are brutally slaughtered and quartered using axes. There is one animal remaining alive, but there is some question over his status. He might be a bull. Bulls are not slaughtered at the yard, and the baying of the bloodthirsty crowd agitates the bull to such a degree that he charges at the crowd. He is lassoed quickly but the lasso goes taut and a child in the crowd is decapitated. Another member of the crowd is trampled to death as the bull breaks free and makes an escape bid.
After an hour long chase, the bull is caught and slaughtered in the most barbaric of ways by the butcher, as if punishing the bull for trying to escape. The animal is cut open and it is revealed that he has retracted testicles. This seems to amuse the crowd.
A man in his mid twenties enters the slaughter yard. He is a supporter of the Unitario which means that he is on enemy turf. He wears his sideburns in the shape of the letter U, to demonstrate his support, and he is not displaying the ribbon mourning Rosa's late wife. It is a reckless way in which to go about Buenos Aires, and it is also illegal to be out in public without displaying any kind of allegiance to Rosa. The crowd can tell the man is not from the villages; he rides a horse that bears a saddle that is considered a gringo saddle which marks him out as a city slicker, and the object of derision.
Matasiete, the butcher, pulls the man from his horse and holds a dagger to his throat. The crowd bays for blood (as if they had not seen enough blood that day) but the Judge of the Slaughteryard prevents this by ordering the man be taken to his shed, which doubles as a courtroom in this kind of situation.
The men are angry and the Judge taunts the crowd as well as the city slicker, who is clearly more intelligent than everyone else present. He uses educated, formal Spanish, even when shouting epithets at the crowd, whose language is more colloquial. The judge finally issues his ruling; the man is to be tortured by rectal insertion, and as he is retrained on the torture table he is filled with so much rage that he can hardly speak. He urges them to slit his throat rather than subject him to the indignity of torture by anal rape.
The build up of rage inside the man is too intense; he bursts a blood vessel and dies on the table before the torture has begun. The Judge shrugs his shoulders in an expression of mock regret, commenting that the man should not have taken everything so seriously, because no harm was intended; the Judge and the crowd were just having a little fun.
