" Just as she'd stripped her body of frills and fripperies in two decades in Puerto Rico, she'd shed her religious belief in much the same way the conquistadores did, for expedience. They arrived in the New World with priests and incantations, but the history of the conquest was strewn with their atrocities, their false promises, rape, their bastards, plunder and murder. They lost their moral center, compromised their faith in the New World. They then erected gold encrusted cathedrals in the Old World to turn humanity's eyes toward beauty and away from their sins. "

― Esmeralda Santiago , Conquistadora