Rosaura A Las Diez

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of domestic violence, sex trafficking, anti-gay bias, and ableism.

Though the characters in Rosaura a las diez have highly varied traits and perspectives, they all share a tendency to make assumptions based on very little information. These assumptions are very frequently, if not always, false, and Denevi is therefore highly concerned with highlighting presumptiveness as a dangerous quality.

This dynamic within the book is summarized by Eufrasia Morales’s pithy claim at the end of her testimony, “The rock cast aside by the architects may well prove to be the keystone of the building” (182), in reference to the maid, Elsa, who has been presumed irrelevant by Mrs. Milagros. Throughout her testimony, Mrs. Milagros is openly dismissive of Elsa and speaks of her in derogatory, ableist terms. This tone is exemplified in Elsa’s introduction: “I hired a maid (or more accurately, a mule, since she’s a little slow, poor thing, and lame and half deaf as well)” (20). Presuming Elsa to be wholly incapable because of her disabilities, Mrs. Milagros barely mentions her, even when she is present for key events in the story.