50 pages • 1 hour read
Isabel CañasThe Hacienda
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary: “Beatriz”
The military officers lock Beatriz in the storeroom with her hands tied. There is nothing to protect her from the darkness, and she begins to have visions from María about how Juana killed her. When Rodolfo was away, Juana attacked María and stabbed her to death. Once María bled to death, Ana Luisa helped Juana hide in the body in the wall of the north wing.
Two military officials take Beatriz out of the storeroom and put her in the study that connects to her bedchamber. Juana tells the guards that she is unreliable because she believes that the house is haunted. She leaves Beatriz locked in the study, and Beatriz feels terror sink in without copal or candles to protect her. She begins hearing voices and focuses on praying and casting the voices out of her head.
As night falls, the house begins to torment Beatriz. She fights the darkness back and tells it to avenge the person who hurt it. She threatens María’s spirit and tells her that if she kills her, Beatriz’s spirit will linger with her in the house and make her miserable. A noise distracts María Catalina’s spirit, and Beatriz realizes that someone is cutting through the rafters above her. At first, she thinks Andrés has come to save her, but then she smells alcohol and looks up to see Juana staring back at her from a hole she cut in the roof. Without a word, Juana drops her torch into the room with Beatriz.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Andrés”
Andrés goes to the hacienda as darkness falls to find proof of Juana’s parentage. Before he enters, he smells smoke and realizes that the house is on fire. He sees a figure on the roof and realizes that it is Juana. He knows that Beatriz could die within minutes if he does not help her. He tries calling on the clouds in the distance to come to his aid, but he does not have enough power. Desperate to save Beatriz, Andrés opens the box in his chest where he keeps his power hidden and unleashes all of it. He calls on the clouds again, and they listen to him, gathering over the house. Rain begins pouring down, and Andrés rushes into the house to save Beatriz.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Beatriz”
Beatriz rushes to escape the flames that are spreading in the room. She yells at María’s spirit and reminds her that Juana is the one who murdered her. The house reacts and gives way beneath Juana so that she crashes down into the study. Beatriz sees that Juana still has the keys with her and tries to help her stand up so they can both escape. Before she realizes what is happening, Juana attacks her with the machete she used to cut through the roof and slashes Beatriz’s side. Suddenly, Andrés breaks the door down with his magic and takes Beatriz out of the room. She looks behind her to see the fire and parts of the house fall on Juana. Andrés and Beatriz escape the house safely as the rain puts out the fire.
Chapter 31 Summary
Beatriz wakes up in Paloma’s room. There is a letter by her bedside absolving her of Rodolfo’s murder. Underneath this are letters from her mother that date back several months. Beatriz cries as she realizes that Rodolfo kept these letters from her because he wanted to keep her isolated and that her mother never abandoned her. Paloma comes in and tells her that she found the letters with Rodolfo’s possessions. After reading the letters, Beatriz decides that she wants to leave San Isidro and go home to her mother.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Andrés”
After days of waiting by Beatriz’s side, Andrés is relieved that she has woken up. Andrés buries Juana and Rodolfo in the hacienda’s graveyard. Paloma had Beatriz’s charges dropped after she found a bloodied nightgown and knife in Juana’s room. Paloma tells him about the letters from Beatriz’s mother, and he knows that this means that Beatriz will want to leave San Isidro. He tries not to think about that as he goes to the hacienda to release María’s spirit. With his newfound power, he knows that he will not have trouble putting her to rest.
Andrés goes into the parlor and calls on María’s apparition. She appears and resists him, telling him that she hopes he burns in hell. He tells her that “there is only One who decides who burns and who does not” and then he banishes her spirit from the hacienda (319).
Chapter 33 Summary: “Beatriz”
Beatriz slowly recovers from her wound. She is happy that she is going to live with her mother and reclaim an aspect of her old life. Back at the hacienda, Beatriz can sense the difference in the house. Andrés assures her that María is gone forever and that the house is safe. Beatriz knows that he is telling her this because he wants her to stay, even though he knows she must leave for her own healing. It begins to rain, and they seek shelter in the chapel. Andrés kisses her and they make love in his room. She asks him to come with her, but he does not respond.
Chapter 34 Summary
The next morning, Beatriz readies to leave the hacienda. Beatriz sold portions of the land to keep the hacienda going under Mendoza and Paloma’s supervision while she is gone.
Andrés comes to say goodbye. She invites him to come with her one last time, but he tells her he cannot abandon his people. Beatriz feels a mixture of wanting Andrés to choose her over everything and knowing that she loves him because of his loyalty to his people. Beatriz knows that her wealth from being a widow will support her for the rest of her life, but because of Andrés’s encouragement, she feels encouraged to start a new life. She tells Andrés that she will always trust him, and then gets into the carriage and leaves.
Chapter 35 Summary: “Andrés”
Andrés kneels in the road as he watches Beatriz leave. He knows it is the right thing for her to leave and heal from everything she experienced at the hacienda, but he knows that he will miss her more than anything.
After she leaves, Andrés finds solace in the house and its memories. Six weeks after Beatriz’s departure, he feels the house calling him to go into the parlor. There is a white envelope sitting on one of the tables, and he realizes it is a letter from Beatriz addressed to him. Andrés had written to her a few weeks before, not knowing if he would ever hear back from her. He hears the house asking about Beatriz, and he tells it that she is gone. He jumps as a door slams, and the house laughs at him. San Isidro is healing from its wounds, and he hopes that means that he will heal too. However, he decides he is not ready to heal quite yet, so he opens Beatriz’s letter.
Chapters 28-35 Analysis
The climax of the novel occurs as Beatriz and Andrés both learn to accept their pasts and The Importance of Honoring Cultural Identity. As Beatriz fights off the spirit of María Catalina, she accepts her grief over losing her father and her old way of life. Andrés faces his fear of unleashing his power and fully embracing his cultural heritage. He chooses to accept his heritage when he unlocks the metaphorical box that holds his power and saves Beatriz. This links self-love and love for others in the pursuit of justice.
Beatriz and Andrés work to heal from the trauma they have experienced over the previous months. With this, the book’s climax asserts that healing requires confronting The Trauma of Colonial Oppression directly rather than fleeing or suppressing it. Andrés decides to face María Catalina and banish her spirit from San Isidro. He knows that hate like María’s “was a cancer” (319), highlighting how ignoring racism and other biases only lets them fester. María’s spirit tells him that she hopes he burns in Hell, a statement that would have affected him only a week before. However, in choosing to accept the duality in his cultural heritage and his faith in God, María’s words do not hold power over him anymore. Andrés knows that María, Padre Vicente, or even his father could say whatever they wanted about him and his identity as a witch, but none of that truly mattered. All that Andrés can do “[is] serve the home and people [he] love[s] using every gift [he] was born with” (319). The knowledge that only God could judge him is freeing to Andrés because he knows that no human can hold that judgment and hate over him any longer.
Beatriz, likewise, self-actualizes in these final chapters, standing up to María Catalina and reuniting with her mother. Although Beatriz is grateful for the wealth and freedom she has accumulated as Rodolfo’s widow, San Isidro does not truly belong to her. She understands that if “it belonged to anyone, it was to the people who lived here, like Paloma and Ana Luisa and Mendoza. To Andrés. Or perhaps it belonged to no one, and would forever remain a willful, ancient domain unto itself” (323). Beatriz chooses to give the hacienda and the land back to its Indigenous people, which saves her from becoming an oppressor like Rodolfo or María Catalina. This represents a path toward restorative justice, undoing a piece of colonial violence.
Despite Andrés and Beatriz’s passion for each other, they love each other too much to ever force each other to compromise their values. This selfless love stands in contrast to Rodolfo’s domineering and violent interactions with women. Beatriz asks Andrés repeatedly to come with her to the capital, but he cannot leave his people behind. Beatriz wrestles with wanting him to abandon everything for her but also wishing and hoping “for him to never, ever change” (331). Andrés is the reason she believed in herself because he never stopped “reaching into a nightmare and drawing [her] to a dawn” (332). Beatriz tells Andrés she trusts him because they both saw the darkest sides of the other person and still chose to love and accept each other. In this way, their love for each other leads to finally accepting themselves.
