A 71-year-old Artemio Cruz (narrating in the first-person present tense) wakes up in a hospital bed. The year, though it is not stated, is 1960. Next to him are his wife, Catalina, and their daughter, Teresa, who is reading the newspaper her father owns. Padilla, Cruz’s trusted secretary, arrives with a tape recorder to record their conversation, as he does for all Cruz’s business dealings. Cruz is in acute pain, and he notices each physical sensation despite the fact that he is losing his memory. He remembers a turbulent plane ride from Sonora to Mexico City on a day when he had several conversations with Mexican government officials with whom he used to do business in real estate, natural resources (such as mines and timber), and the newspaper that Cruz owns. The narration shifts to second-person self-talk as Cruz’s disparate memories suggest that he took advantage of the poor conditions of peasants after the Mexican Revolution to charge high-interest loans on land. Cruz also leverages his newspaper to print libelous materials about his political opponents.

A third-person narrative picks up in 1941 with Cruz in the back of a limousine, reading the newspaper.