Her colleagues thought Miraluz was using the shrinking as a metaphor for the oppressive factory environment, but when they saw her shoulders slump over, her head dip on her way into the room, they began to worry. Miraluz didn’t need them to understand. She knew that the space had become too small for her; and soon would be too small for all of them. If she didn’t find a way out of there soon, she’d be another stalk in the cane field, cut, refined, and devoured, with only the cavity as proof of her existence.

Miraluz sewed her last pile of bras and thought about the land in Los Llanos. Why couldn’t she return and live there with her relentless abuela, María Magdalena de Jesús? To move back to Los Llanos would be crazy. She wouldn’t have a way to survive. Yes, she could attempt to live off the land. They had done it successfully in the sixties, but the land needed a lot of work and she would need people to join her. It was an impossible situation, because if she sold her plot, like many others had, the foreigners would turn the land into a plantation. It would go against everything the Invisible Ones had fought for. But then again, what use was it to have land that so few people lived on?

Miraluz stitched labels onto seams, day after day. Piece after piece. Piles of Victoria’s Secret labels, waiting to add their signature to a bra, a panty, a camisole.

—Victoria, Miraluz said to herself, was like victory, —Victoria Secret. Must be like a secreto. Victoria Secreto.

It was a strange name for a bra. Who was Victoria? What secret did she have? El Secreto de Victoria sounded like the name of a soap opera. Or was it el Secreto de la Victoria?

The secret of victory?

The blood rushed up to her face, warming her cheeks as she said the words over and over, as she sewed hundreds of labels to the tiny pieces of fabric. As the sweat beads piled up against her skin, the machines’ trill roared without pause, making her eardrums tremble in agony. El Secreto de la Victoria, she said, the voice in her head loud and full.

Miraluz stood up to stop everyone from what they were doing to announce her discovery. All those years after they had lost the hope of living in a true democracy, she and Don Chan would contemplate where was the secret of victory. And all along it was staring at her every day. She looked at the women in the factory, stuffed like sardines, without elbow room, backs hunched over, one beside another, under artificial light, the machine trilling and churning without ceasing. The overseer yelling, —Rápido, rápido. Women squeezing balls of fabric in between their legs, while they trembled because they were afraid to ask for permission to go again to the bathroom. —El Secreto de la Victoria, Miraluz whispered. She tucked one of the labels in her fist and raised her hand as a symbol. No one looked up at her, they were too busy filling their quota or they would get fired. Miraluz tucked the label in her shirt pocket, making sure no one saw her. The women were known to snitch on each other for small bribes by the overseer. She couldn’t afford to lose her job. Not yet.