America Is in the Heart: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

After the tragedy of Leon’s wedding, Father brings Carlos’s other brother, Amado, back from the nearby town. The youngest of Carlos’s four brothers, Amado is attending grade school and living with his mother and baby sister. Carlos’s other brothers have already ventured off to other towns, but when they return, they share their experiences with the family. “This boundless affinity for each other, this humanity that grew in each of us,” Carlos explains, was “the one redeeming quality in our poverty.” Carlos’s other brother, Luciano, is at military camp completing a three-year service in the Philippine Scouts, a native branch of the United States army. Most importantly, Carlos’s brother Macario is attending high school in Lingayen, Pangasinan’s capital.

Carlos’s family has sacrificed much to put Macario through school so that he can become a teacher in Binalonan and help support that family. Meanwhile, Amado helps Father with the farm work. Father tells Carlos and Amado to bring the animals to the corral, and after doing so, Carlos hitches a bamboo sled to a goat and carries three empty petroleum cans to the village. There, he fills the cans with water and brings them back to the corral, where he fills the animals’ water troughs. That night, Carlos helps prepare the family a dinner of string beans, small beef slices, rice, and salted fish. After dinner, the family washes the coconut-shell dishes. Father then discusses Macario, “our pride and the star of all our hope,” with Carlos and Amado. The family goes to bed at midnight.

Spring gives way to the summer rainy season, and after he drives the animals to pasture, Carlos brings a bamboo tube full of drinking water and goes to join Father and Amado in the corn field. They hope to harvest the corn before the heavy rains come. As Carlos makes his way to the corn, Father calls for Carlos in a voice that rolls through the valley “like the trees that whispered as I ran eagerly toward them.” When Carlos arrives at the field, the men work furiously to harvest the corn, as they know the rains will come within a few hours. As they work on the last row of the three hectares of corn, the sky opens. The rains break loose an irrigation ditch, and the men watch helplessly as the water “thunder[s] towards the cornlands” and swallows up the green stalks of corn. 

Father warns that the rains will flood Binalonan and destroy the rice crops. Father proves prescient, as the next morning brings news that all of Binalonan’s rice fields are under water. The rains do not stop until September, when the sun reemerges. September also marks the start of another school year for Macario.

Although the American government brought free, “popular education” to the Philippines, schools are centered in far-off towns, and living in those towns requires money for room and board, money that Carlos’s family does not have. Carlos’s illiterate parents are “willing to sacrifice anything and everything to put […] Macario through high school,” so Father sells a hectare of land and gives the money to Macario for school. The family also plants extra beans and Mother trades salted fish in the villages in exchange for chickens, eggs, and beans that she then sells at market.

Carlos’s family deprive themselves “of any form of leisure” to put Macario through high school. The thought that he would not finish school terrifies them. Father borrows money from a moneylender in exchange for deeds to acres of the family land. Father knows full well that failure to repay the loan will automatically give the moneylender ownership of the family land. The family hopes that Macario’s eventual wages from teaching high school will be enough to repay the moneylender. The arrangement leaves the family with only one hectare of land, which is not enough to sustain them.

Although Carlos’s brothers would like to attend high school, the family can only afford schooling for one child. A local church allows Father to clear five hectares of its land, which gives Father new hope. The family burns the brush off the land, but must wait until the rains pass to uproot the heavy tree roots that remain in the ground. One night, while working under a heavy rain, Amado’s water buffalo stops working. An enraged Amado starts hitting the animal with a stick. This enrages Father, who stops Amado from hitting the animal. Overcome with anger, Amado drops the stick and bids goodbye to “Allos” (the name Carlos often goes by among family) and runs off towards Binalonan. 

Later, Carlos sees Amado again when he moves to Binalonan to live with Mother. Amado is working as a janitor at the town hall, and Carlos climbs coconut trees to collect the fruits and sell them in market. One rainy day, however, he falls from a coconut tree and breaks several bones. As he lies healing at Mother’s house and watches his baby sister, Irene, Amado comes over and gives him magazines and a large book, which Carlos vows to learn how to read. Though he no longer attends school, Amado has “a passionate desire for education,” and this passion inspires Carlos throughout his life.