Summary

The second chapter is told from the perspective of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic and takes place in 1961. Waking up early in the morning from nightmares, he bemoans the fraught relationship between the Dominican Republic and the U.S.; on one hand, the U.S. has sanctioned the Dominican Republic and is pressuring them over human rights, while on the other, Trujillo thinks he owes everything to the discipline he learned while training as a marine. Yet while clothing himself, Trujillo discovers that he has wet the bed. Furious, he blames the accident on a “skinny little cunt” that he spent the night with a couple days ago (16).

As he goes through his morning exercises and hygeine – which he calls his “only religion” – the memory of this still unnamed girl continues to plague him (19). He wonders whether she has gossiped about the...