How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
It was all over the papers the next day. Forty-nine men and boys martyred in those mountains. We had seen the only four saved, and for what? Tortures I didn't want to think of. (2.8.120)
After Patria's retreat that ended in the failed invasion, her revolutionary fire is fueled by the information reported in the paper. It might seem strange that the newspapers include such information rather than censoring it, but perhaps the high numbers of deaths were meant to frighten anyone contemplating an insurrection.
Quote #8
And afterwards we read in the papers how one boat with ninety-three on board had been bombed before it could land; the other with sixty-seven landed, but the army with the help of local campesinos hunted those poor martyrs down. (2.8.121)
The Trujillo regime answers the attacks from Cuba and its own revolutionaries with overwhelming violence, but the real key is that it has the campesinos (peasants) on its side. Patria calls their victims "martyrs" which gives their sacrifice a religious connotation.
Quote #9
It was on that very coffee table on which Noris had once knocked a tooth out tussling with her brother that the plans for the attack were drawn. On January 21st, the day of the Virgin of Highest Grace, the different groups would gather here to arm themselves and receive their last-minute instructions. (2.8.167)
Patria remembers the everyday violence of a brother-sister wrestling match (Noris' lost tooth), and contrasts it with the revolutionary violence she and her group are planning in her living room. Her home is the setting for both kinds of scuffles, but their outcomes are very different.