The novel tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest in the state of Tabasco in Mexico during the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government, still effectively controlled by Plutarco Elías Calles, strove to suppress the Catholic Church. The persecution was especially severe in the province of Tabasco, where the anti-clerical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal had founded and actively encouraged "fascist" paramilitary groups (called the “Red-Shirts”) and succeeded in closing all the churches in the state; forcing the priests to marry and give up their gowns, making a hitherto conservative and staid state a model of revolutionary sterility and oppression.