How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
In all these households she could hear stories of political outrage; friends, relatives, ruined, imprisoned, killed in the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously executed in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of the country had been a struggle of lust between bands of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and uniforms and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administration without law, without security, and without justice. (I.7.5)
The "she" here is Mrs. Gould. This is one of many references to the country's long history of wars and infighting, which, in Mrs. Gould's view, the country is tired of.
Quote #2
The club, dating from the days of the proclamation of Costaguana's independence, boasted many names of liberators amongst its first founders. Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable times by various Governments, with memories of proscriptions and of at least one wholesale massacre of its members, sadly assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous military commandante (their bodies were afterwards stripped naked and flung into the plaza out of the windows by the lowest scum of the populace), it was again flourishing, at that period, peacefully. (I.8.4)
Here, we get a gruesome glimpse at a previous chapter in Sulaco's history in which members of the Aristocratic Club were invited to lunch and then tossed out the window after the meal. The sheer number of these violent stories in this novel is pretty impressive.
Quote #3
The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of the escort grew bigger as the years went on. Every three months an increasing stream of treasure swept through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong room in the O.S.N. Co.'s building by the harbour, there to await shipment for the North. Increasing in volume, and of immense value also; for, as Charles Gould told his wife once with some exultation, there had never been seen anything in the world to approach the vein of the Gould Concession. For them both, each passing of the escort under the balconies of the Casa Gould was like another victory gained in the conquest of peace for Sulaco. (I.8.43)
As already mentioned elsewhere, Charles claimed to see the San Tomé mine not just as an opportunity for financial gain, but also a means of ensuring lasting peace for his country.