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.
Character Analysis
Beatriz Hernández Valenzuela
Beatriz Hernández Valenzuela, the protagonist of The Hacienda, is a dynamic character who processes her family trauma through the haunting of San Isidro. Beatriz’s main conflict is combatting the racism, sexism, and colorism she faces that are remnants of Spain’s colonization of Mexico. Beatriz’s strong sense of familial loyalty and personal survival informs her decision to marry Rodolfo despite her mother’s disapproval. The marriage highlights the intensity of the dehumanization Beatriz faced at Tía Fernanda’s house because she is willing to sacrifice her morals to ensure that she and her mother do not starve.
Beatriz makes the best decision she can with the options she has as a woman under the patriarchy. In her narration, she reflects, “He was safe. He was right. I had made the one decision that was guaranteed to lift me from the grim fate to which my father’s murder had doomed us” (21). Even though Beatriz experiences discrimination from Tía Fernanda, she risks becoming a similar oppressor because of the wealth and power she gains through Rodolfo. At first, she loves the attention she receives from the villagers and the hacendados when she attends mass for the first time. She hears the congregation whispering about her, and she “relishe[s] it. [She] cup[s] that power and [holds] it close to [her] chest” (26). Beatriz wants to marry Rodolfo so that she can escape oppression, but she soon realizes that racism will always other her in the eyes of the Spanish population. No matter how beautiful or distinguished she becomes, they will never accept her because of the color of her skin.
The haunting of San Isidro externalizes Beatriz’s inner conflict. Although the house is haunted before she arrives, Beatriz hears voices or sees hallucinations every time she reflects on her own personal trauma. Cañas uses this as a device to trace Beatriz’s character development. At the end of the novel, Beatriz fights off María Catalina’s spirit with the pent-up frustration and pain from her experiences. Beatriz releases her repressed grief from losing her father and her way of life at the hacienda. After this, Beatriz partially heals from her trauma, but she still longs for the comfort of home and family, which is why she decides to leave San Isidro. Even though she loves Andrés, Beatriz’s newfound wealth and freedom allow her to finally put her healing process first after everything she has been through.
Padre Andrés
Padre Andrés is Beatriz’s romantic interest and the secondary narrator of The Hacienda. He is a dynamic, complex character who wrestles with the internal conflict of his faith in God and his cultural heritage. Andrés believes in God, but he is aware that his acceptance by the Catholic church is based on suppressing his cultural identity. Andrés’s cultural identity is closely linked to his ethnic identity; as a Mestizo man, he must live with the burden that his Spanish father raped his Indigenous mother. Andrés cannot escape the trauma of his father’s crimes against his mother, but he does realize that he has a duty to the Indigenous villagers to help them heal from the war and the threat of colonization. Andrés tells Beatriz that the reason he has come back to Apan is because “the war left scars. It left demons. It broke people […] They need to be listened to, they need to be heard, and there are things they can’t speak about with the other priests” (121). Even if the people of Apan have accepted Christianity, there are aspects of their lives and culture that the Criollo priests will never understand.
Andrés’s relationship with Titi was the most important in his life before he met Beatriz. Titi was the only one who saw Andrés’s identity and continued to love him for it. She guided him throughout his life and helped him connect to his ancestral magic, and he grieves her absence. However, Andrés realizes that he must make a path for himself apart from Titi. Since she is gone, he has no one to guide him, but he gains wisdom from his memories of her. Through these memories, Andrés realizes that his purpose is to fulfill the role of his grandmother to the villagers.
Andrés’s duty to tend to the souls of Apan goes beyond Catholicism because even though many of the Indigenous people have accepted Christianity, the Criollo priests cannot address the ways that Christianity has created some of their wounds. By stripping the Indigenous population of their religions and practices, Catholicism tries to erase part of the people’s cultural identity. Andrés resolves his internal conflict by fully embracing Titi’s tradition and culture and accepting his identity as a witch. When he finally banishes María Catalina from the hacienda, he tells her that “there is only One who decides who burns and who does not” (319). He realizes that no one can tell him the state of his soul but God himself; therefore, he does not have to submit to the racist, discriminatory practices of the Spanish population.
Juana
Juana is the antagonist of the narrative. She kills María Catalina and Rodolfo because she wants to ensure that she keeps the hacienda and her inheritance, even though she is not seen as a legitimate heir. Despite patriarchal social norms, Juana exhibits a great deal of freedom, which Beatriz admires because she “live[s] well without marrying, an enviable privilege in wartime and peace alike” (45). Although Juana stays out of the main narrative until the end of the novel, Cañas builds tension with her character because the house is always calling her name. Juana lives in the servant’s quarters because she fears the house. This aspect of her character is ironic because Juana murdered María Catalina to keep her authority in the house, yet she cannot enter it for fear of María’s ghost. This emphasizes that oppressing and harming others will not empower women under patriarchy.
As a Criolla woman, Juana holds authority and privilege that the other women in the narrative do not have. Even though her inheritance is considered illegitimate, she asserts her power over Andrés and the other Mestizo people as often as she can. By calling Andrés by his father’s Spanish name, she subtly reminds him of this power dynamic whenever she speaks to him. Andrés knows that she uses this tactic as “a constant reminder that [his] father and once served hers, that [his] family still serve[s] her, and that no matter how tall [he] grew, how far [he] traveled, how much [he] studied, how high [he] rose, she would always look down her nose at” him (145).
Juana shows how she represents the epitome of colonial power and oppression when she calls Andrés a “Charlatan. Native superstition” (169). Juana believes that the way she sees the world is completely superior to the Indigenous traditions of the land she lives on. She refuses to entertain any other perspective but her own and is only concerned with preserving her own interests and authority. The irony in this colonial mentality, as Beatriz realizes at the end of the narrative, is that the land and the house for which Juana is killing does not even belong to her in the first place: it belongs to the Indigenous people who work on it. Juana refuses to consider this fact because of the racist belief that she is superior to others, making her a static character.
Rodolfo Solórzano
Rodolfo Solórzano is the patrón of San Isidro and Beatriz’s husband. He is a flat character and acts as the quintessential privileged, racist Criollo who believes that he is superior to Mestizo people and the Indigenous population and can take advantage of them. Although Beatriz does not know about his crimes when she marries him, she does understand that Rodolfo only married her because of her beauty and her ability to act as a hacendado wife. Beatriz knows that her appearance makes her alluring to men like Rodolfo, who are “conquest-minded men” (28). Rodolfo sees Beatriz as a prize and an object rather than as a person. It soon becomes clear that Rodolfo does not see any woman as a person.
Rodolfo uses progressive politics to assert power. When Andrés first returns to Apan after seminary, he learns that Rodolfo has joined the side of the insurgents, even though it cost him the support of the hacendados. Andrés hopes that this proves that Rodolfo is different than his father, thinking that “now that old Solórzano was dead, the people of San Isidro would suffer less under the younger man’s watch” (40). However, Andrés soon learns that Rodolfo is no different than his father; he is simply hypocritical because he knows that when the war is over, he will have a position of power because he supported the insurgents.
When she first marries Rodolfo, Beatriz thinks he is progressive about women’s rights because she “heard him talk about women’s education and the importance of widows running haciendas in the country in the wake of the war” (49). However, after learning about his history of sexual assault and the way he treats his sister when she defies him, Beatriz realizes that Rodolfo is hypocritical and cynical, using the language of progress to disguise how he oppresses others. Rodolfo keeps his true nature hidden as he is both “a staunch defender of the Republic and casta abolitionist who raped women who worked on his property” (229). Rodolfo’s only concern is gaining power, and he will take any stand or say anything to keep this power to himself.
