The Sugarcane Field in Of Women and Salt: A Symbol of Secrets, Confession, and Confrontation

The Sugarcane Field as a Physical and Historical Anchor

The sugarcane field in Of Women and Salt first appears as a literal place of labor and colonial economy. In 1866 Camagüey, María Isabel's mother Aurelia walks each day to work in the sugarcane fields, her body worn down by decades of hard work. The novel makes clear that sugar is the engine of the Cuban economy: the economy increasingly concentrates on sugar, on plantations run on slave labor. The field is thus not merely a backdrop but a material fact of colonial exploitation—the ground on which Cuba's wealth is built and the bodies that build it are broken. Aurelia's determination to work to the day of her death underscores how the field consumes those who labor in it.

The field also stands in contrast to the tobacco workshop where María Isabel works. While the cigar factory is a space of relative intellectual freedom—where the lector reads newspapers and novels aloud—the sugarcane field represents the harder, more brutal end of Cuban labor. The novel's economic geography matters: tobacco employs skilled rollers who hear readings of Victor Hugo and Cirilo Villaverde; sugarcane employs the exhausted, the desperate, the dying. The field is where the novel's poorest characters end up.

The Field as a Site of Violence

The field's second appearance transforms it into a site of horror. After fighting reaches Camagüey, María Isabel ventures out and discovers a field of dozens of men slaughtered, their bodies left rotting in the heat, a hog feeding on the remains. She recognizes the face of a fellow tobacco roller among the dead. This is the field as mass grave—a space where the violence of colonial war becomes visible, unburied, and undeniable. The sugarcane that once represented economic productivity now conceals and reveals death.

The novel's description of the field is deliberately gruesome: the impaled soldier, the coagulated blood, the flies, the hog with its face smeared in dark blood. This is not a romanticized pastoral landscape. The field is where the cost of empire is paid in flesh.

The Field as Clandestine Space

The field's most significant transformation comes when Antonio and María Isabel begin holding secret reading sessions there. After the workshop owner censors the lector's readings and Spanish soldiers arrive with an edict ending all readings, the sugarcane field becomes the only place where forbidden knowledge can circulate. The field, previously a site of labor and death, becomes a space of intellectual and romantic intimacy—a place where María Isabel and Antonio can read Victor Hugo's letters, discuss the rebellion, and build their relationship away from the surveillance of the workshop and the colonial authorities.

This clandestine use of the field is short-lived and fatal. The soldiers discover the meetings and execute Antonio. The field that sheltered their secret becomes the site of his death. The sugarcane that once hid them now exposes them. This is the field's cruelest transformation: from refuge to execution ground. María Isabel, pregnant, stays home while the soldiers find the meetings—a detail that makes the field's violence inseparable from the family that will follow.

The Field Across Generations

The sugarcane field does not remain confined to 1866. In a later chapter narrated by Carmen, she recalls Jeanette taking her elbow as she did in the sugarcane field—a gesture that links the two women to a shared experience in a Cuban sugarcane field in the modern era. This brief reference suggests the field persists as a space of connection and confrontation across generations. Carmen and Jeanette's relationship, like María Isabel and Antonio's, is forged in a space that is both intimate and exposed.

The recurrence of the sugarcane field across the novel's timelines—from colonial Cuba to contemporary Cuba—makes it a symbol of continuity. The same ground that held Aurelia's labor, María Isabel's secret readings, and Antonio's execution also holds the memories of later generations. The field is a repository of what is hidden, what is lost, and what is passed down.

Thematic Connections

The sugarcane field connects to several of the novel's central themes:

Intergenerational trauma: The field is where Aurelia's body breaks down, where María Isabel witnesses mass death, where Antonio is killed. These traumas echo forward into the lives of later generations, even those who never set foot in a Cuban field. The novel's structure—jumping between 1866, 2006, 2014, and 2019—invites readers to trace these echoes.
Mother-daughter relationships: Aurelia's labor in the fields shapes María Isabel's life and choices. The field is part of what María Isabel inherits—not land, but the knowledge of what that land costs. The novel's exploration of mother-daughter bonds across generations is anchored in this inherited knowledge.
Migration and displacement: The field is tied to Cuba itself—to the land people leave behind. The sugar economy that concentrates wealth in the hands of plantation owners is part of what drives displacement. The novel's treatment of migration, from María Isabel's Cuba to Gloria's El Salvador to Ana's journey across the Rio Grande, is shadowed by the field's history.
Class inequality and privilege: The field is where the poorest labor. The sugar economy runs on exploitation, and the field is its most visible symbol. The novel's attention to class—from the cigar workshop to the detention center—finds its earliest expression in the sugarcane field.

Study Questions

1. How does the sugarcane field's meaning shift across the novel?

The field begins as a site of labor and colonial economy—where Aurelia works and where the sugar economy concentrates wealth. It becomes a site of violence when María Isabel discovers the slaughtered soldiers. It then becomes a clandestine space for forbidden reading and romance, before transforming again into a site of execution when Antonio is killed there. In the modern timeline, the field reappears as a memory connecting Carmen and Jeanette. Each transformation layers new meaning onto the same physical ground.

2. Why does the novel place the secret reading sessions in a sugarcane field specifically?

The field is a space outside the workshop and outside the town—a place where the surveillance of the workshop owner and the Spanish authorities does not reach. It is also a space associated with labor and the land itself, connecting the act of reading to the material conditions of Cuban life. The field's association with concealment (the tall sugarcane can hide people) makes it a natural refuge, but its openness also makes it vulnerable—a tension that proves fatal for Antonio.

3. How does the sugarcane field connect to the novel's treatment of intergenerational trauma?

The field is where multiple generations of Cuban women and men experience loss: Aurelia's labor breaks her body, María Isabel witnesses mass death and loses Antonio, and the memory of the field persists into the modern timeline through Carmen and Jeanette. The field functions as a physical anchor for trauma that is passed down—not through direct inheritance, but through the land itself and the stories attached to it.

4. What does the field's recurrence in the modern timeline suggest about the novel's view of Cuba?

The brief reference to Jeanette and Carmen in a sugarcane field suggests that the field is not merely a historical relic but a living space. The same ground that held colonial violence and secret readings continues to hold contemporary relationships and confrontations. The field's persistence suggests that Cuba's history—its labor, its violence, its hidden intimacies—remains present, not past.

For a broader view of how this symbol operates within the novel's larger structure, see the book overview and the related theme pages on addiction and recovery and migration and displacement.