Prayers for the Stolen

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-11

Part 2

Part 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Chemicals and Poisons

Content Warning: The Symbols and Motifs entry on Masks and Concealment contains references to sex trafficking and rape.

Chemicals and poisons are a recurring motif in Prayers for the Stolen. Deadly scorpions and snakes that live in and around Chulavista are defined by their poisons. The herbicide Paraquat is dropped over the surrounding countryside, ostensibly to destroy heroin crops. Much of this, in reality, is simply dumped near the village, as the helicopter pilots are afraid of being shot down if they fly too close to the poppy fields. As Ladydi says, after a drop “we could smell the ammonia scent in everything and our eyes burned for days” (39). The Paraquat chemical is not merely an irritant; it can also blind and kill, and it is only the intervention of her classmates that saves Paula from being killed by it. The chemical also, as Ladydi explains, “would continue to burn through the land for decades” (131). It poisons the local habitat for years and is associated with both respiratory illnesses, as seen in Rita’s cough, and with birth defects, such as Maria’s harelip.

Other poisons are used throughout the novel. Ladydi remarks that the house in Acapulco “smelled like rotten lemons from constant fumigations” (128). Chemicals are used to destroy insects in the residence but also have negative effects on its human inhabitants. The same is true of the chemical Aurora carries around on her back and sprays into the prison cells to destroy bedbugs and fleas. This poison clearly makes her ill, causing headaches and stomach pain and making her eyes and skin appear jaundiced. All of these chemicals represent a crude and indiscriminate way of addressing a problem. Rather than engaging with the local specificities and complexities of an issue or looking at underlying causes, those with power simply aim to eradicate a nuisance. As seen with the Paraquat and the drug trade, this choice often harms the very people it is supposed to protect.

Television, Knowledge, and Escapism

Ladydi states, regarding her mother, that “the one and only thing my father ever bought her when he came back from the United States was a small satellite dish antenna” (8). Nevertheless, this one small gift has a profound effect on Rita’s life. Whenever she is not working, she watches television and spends her time absorbing the latest documentary on anything from Ancient Rome to bullfighting. She gets all her information about the broader world from television and develops a surprisingly broad stock of references from it. For example, at various points she refers to topics such as Trojan horses and Amazonian women. Additionally, as Ladydi says, “My mother watched television because it was the only way out of our mountain” (87). It not only provides a source of knowledge and entertainment but also allows for escapism, a way of forgetting about the grim realities of life in Chulavista.

Unsurprisingly, television also affects Ladydi, who grows up with it as a constant backdrop to her life. She learns about standards of beauty and femininity from this medium. As she says, “On television I watched girls getting pretty, combing their hair and braiding it with pink bows or wearing makeup” (3). Then, when she gets older, she starts to view her own experiences through the lens of television. In the car with Mike, she imagines that she is in a television advertisement: “We were like those television car commercials… Mike and I would be a couple wearing dark glasses… my frizzy hair would be blown out and cascading down my back” (115). She even comes to view Mike’s murders, which she indirectly witnessed, as if they were scenes from a television show, rather than brutal and real acts. This allows her to set aside what happened at the shack while she lives in the Acapulco house. It is also why she is so dispassionate about both that event and then her own arrest and incarceration; she experiences a TV viewer’s detachment from these events.

Masks and Concealment

At the novel’s start, Ladydi describes the “black SUVs with tinted windows” (7) driven by drug traffickers, which were designed “so the cops could not look inside” (7). Thus, concealing or disguising one’s identity becomes paramount in a world where being identified can lead to arrest or murder. Conversely, the soldiers protecting the clinic from the traffickers “wore ski masks over their faces” and “aviator sunglasses over the eye openings in the wool” (21). Despite the discomfort of wearing such garments in intense heat, they are necessary to protect the soldiers from being identified. Identification by the traffickers can be a death sentence for oneself and one’s family.

However, the young women in the novel must also conceal themselves and who they are. The omnipresent threat of being kidnapped by the traffickers and raped means that the women must dig holes to hide in and conceal all signs of beauty or femininity. This leads, as Ruth points out, to the peculiar enterprise of “ugly parlors” (25). As she says, in her salon The Illusion, “I have to make little girls look like boys… and I have to make pretty girls look ugly” (25). These tactics of concealment are not confined to physical appearance. Juan Rey Ramos, the drug kingpin that Mike kills, assumes the pseudonym “McClane” to avoid capture. Likewise, “Julio,” the gardener Ladydi falls in love with, conceals his real name so that his family and the authorities will believe that he is dead. In Guerrero, then, the price of the drug trade is not only bloodshed. It also requires the suppression of identity and self-expression and the loss of the human connection that would result from intimacy with others.