Esteban Trueba is the principle character of the novel and generally functions as the protagonist. He is related to most of the other principle characters of the novel through marriage or paternity. The novel begins with an early focus on Trueba and extends only briefly beyond his death. Trueba is born c. 1897 in an unidentified South American country—probably Chile—to a family of good name but steeply declining finances. His father is not named but his mother is Doña Ester Trueba. Trueba has one sister, Férula, born about one year before him.
As a young man without means, Trueba falls in love with Rosa del Valle. In order to secure an adequate dowry and establish support for his love, Trueba travels to the distant mining region and spends several years in dangerous and difficult work establishing several producing gold claims. Returning to the big city to claim Rosa, he is devastated to learn that she has died of an accidental poisoning. Declining to take physical custody of his ill mother, Trueba leaves Ester under the continuing care of Férula and travels again to the country, this time to the crumbling family estates of Tres Marías. There, Trueba establishes himself as the patrón and begins a daily routine of hard work. He drives himself hard and expects the same of the peasants—little more than serfs. He also routinely rapes the young peasant women he comes across, fathering a large offspring of unacknowledged bastard children. Several years later the family estate has been turned around and is producing a super-abundance of crops and wealth. Trueba returns to the city and marries Rosa's little sister Clara del Valle, seventeen years his junior.
Trueba fathers three children, Blanca and the twins Jaime and Nicolás. He enters various businesses and always makes money. The family becomes quite wealthy but throughout the years Trueba fails to connect with his children. He remains aloof and viciously conservative in outlook, identifying with the Nazis during World War II and espousing armed violence against Marxism and other left-wing political groups. During his middle age he enters politics and becomes a national senator. During one severe earthquake Trueba is severely injured and takes years to recover, never fully regaining his health and vigor. Living in constant pain, he becomes angry and personally violent. He often lashes out at his children and Clara, finally driving an unbridgeable gulf between them. Totally isolated even in his own house, Trueba retreats inward and becomes a bitter old man. The only person he ever manages to forge a durable relationship with is his granddaughter Alba. As the country is wracked by a military coup and subsequent reign of terror, Trueba laments his own personal losses and sees his fortune and family disintegrate around him. He dies a lonely, wealthy, and sad old man.
