The Spanish Daughter

One of the novel’s antagonists, Angélica, is blonde and usually appears with a cockatoo named Ramona who eats cacao beans. The eldest of Don Armand’s children in South America, Angélica shares many similarities with Puri, including a marriage to a husband who doesn’t fit the traditional model of masculinity. Angélica also maintains an affair with Martin, Don Armand’s administrator and her childhood friend. Fiercely possessive and jealous, Angélica confesses to Puri that “‘Martin is mine. I will never give him up” (249). Simultaneously, Angélica recognizes the gulf between her desires and those of her husband, calling attention to their “arrangement,” which involves men for him and Martin for her. Her closest female friend, introduced in the flashback to her 18^th birthday, was Silvia. While Silvia is only briefly described as controlling and opinionated, Angélica confesses that they no longer speak because she slept with Martin.

Highly intelligent and capable, Angélica confesses that she suffers under the spectral presence of her Spanish sister. The daughter of a mestiza (a woman of Indigenous and Spanish heritage), Don Armand devalues her lineage in comparison with Puri, who is European. Unlike Puri, she grows up around wealth and privilege but doesn’t belong to the hidalgo class (Portuguese or Spanish nobility), and Laurent is a Frenchman with class and a name but no money. She resents that Puri receives the most in her father’s will, even though Angélica was a devoted daughter who took care of him and the estate. She is a dynamic character, changing from Puri’s seeming enemy to a friendly relation before she leaves for her European tour.

Angélica’s younger sister, Catalina, has a holy reputation that isolates her. She gained her reputation by lying about having a vision of the Virgin Mary to hide Elisa, her father’s child from an affair, from her mother. Despite lying about her vision and indulging in cigarettes, which is considered unfeminine and immoral, Catalina remains one of the moral centers of the novel. Kind and gentle, she teaches Franco to read and write and becomes Puri’s friend, eventually moving in with her after La Puri is sold.

Unlike Angélica, who looks like her father, “Catalina must have taken after her mother because she had olive skin and dark, Moorish eyes” (113). Physically attractive, she assumes men don’t speak to her because she isn’t as fair as her sister. A talented seamstress and musician, Catalina is her sister’s foil, both physically and emotionally. She is quiet and reserved and cares less for the material possessions that surround her. Out of all the siblings, she is hurt the most by Puri’s deception.

A complex and dynamic character, Catalina’s transformation is visible through her flashbacks, from a girl who lies to the kindest person Puri meets. They end as true siblings, with a relationship closer than the one she shares with Angélica.

Martin runs the plantation and seduces Angélica and Puri, hoping to regain ownership of La Puri, which his father lost to Don Armand in a chess game. He is strong and capable, embodying stereotypical masculinity according to Puri. Additionally, as a working Ecuadorian, he represents the tensions between the native population and European capitalists; despite actually running the plantation and producing its wealth, he has no ownership over it. Martin is also intelligent—he studied agronomy in Colombia and detects Puri’s disguise as Cristóbal before anyone else. While he fails to win back La Puri, he eventually returns to Colombia and buys a cacao plantation there, trying to escape the blight and fungi affecting the cacao trees in Vinces. He and Puri make amends and stay friends, and he sells her quality cacao beans at a discount, which she uses in her café. He and Puri share a son, although Puri doesn’t admit if she tells him or not.

A high-born Frenchman with little money, Laurent marries Angélica to enjoy a life of luxury and leisure and conceal his attraction to men, an aspect of his identity that challenges Puri’s stereotypical views of masculinity. She also benefits from his name and reputation. As such, their marriage illustrates the complicated class and racial hierarchies in postcolonial Ecuador; Laurent believes he and France are superior to everyone and everything he encounters in Ecuador, and his European heritage elevates Angélica’s social standing (while not elevating her to Puri’s status as a European woman). Laurent views Ecuadorian customs, games, and social life with contempt. He often corrects his wife as she speaks French, and he and Martin have a cold relationship.