On 10 October 1868, the slave bell at the La Demajagua sugar mill in Cuba was rung by the mill's owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to announce to the enslaved workers that they were free and to invite them to join the fight for independence from Spain. However, as Fernando Ortiz points out in his 'Cuban Counterpoint', the bell was later on "replaced by the steam or electric whistle that now stridently calls the workers to duty in the batey, like the whistle of a monstrous foreman made of steel." On the background of slavery and (de)colonisaion, this film, shot in Colombia and Cuba, explores sugarcane production and railways as the machinery necessary for exploitation. With 'piecework' referring to employment forms, in which workers are paid for each unit produced or action performed, regardless of time, the film is, more than anything, meant as a tribute to land and iron workers, to sugarcane harvesters and railway workers.