How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"You still don't get it? Minerva, don't you see? Trujillo is having everyone killed!" (1.2.78)
Sinita is the first one to open Minerva's eyes to the violence that pervades the island. She tells it at night, in the dark, as a secret, but it's actually common knowledge to anyone who's got his or her eyes open. This first exposure to violence is secondhand, but influential for Minerva's life trajectory.
Quote #2
There were the Perozos, not a man left in that family. And Martínez Reyna and his wife murdered in their bed, and thousands of Haitians massacred at the border, making the river, they say, still run red—¡Ay, Dios santo! (1.4.73)
The Perozos are Sinita's family, and every man was killed as punishment for her uncles' treason. Virgilio Martínez Reyna was beheaded, he and his wife among Trujillo's earliest victims. The Haitian massacre refers to the "Parsley Massacre" of 1937. All of these examples are just a few of the thousands of atrocities that Trujillo engineered.
Quote #3
A little while ago, I got up and dragged that heavy box out from under. It was nailed shut, but the nails had some give on one side where I could work the lid loose a little. I held the light up close and peered in. I almost dropped that lamp when I realized what I was looking at—enough guns to start a revolution! (2.7.237)
María Teresa is an innocent college girl when she spends a summer with Minerva. But the night that her nosiness gets the best of her and she snoops in the box under her bed, she finds out that the plans her sister and brother-in-law are making involve serious violence. Do you think it's justified?