The correct answer is A) to suggest that Dominican families must be careful about what they say.
The author's intent in including this description is to suggest that Dominican families must be careful about what they say.
The author makes this description when she writes: "Suddenly, the dark fills with spies who are paid to hear things and report them down at Security..." Which means that nobody knows who can be lurking in the shadows, spying. In another part of the excerpt, we can read: "Words repeated, distorted, words recreated by those who might bear them a grudge, words stitched to words until they are the winding sheet the family will be buried in when their bodies are found dumped in a ditch, their tongues cut off for speaking too much." The author wants the reader to think about the consequences to people who are suspected of conspiracy.
"In the Time of the Butterflies" is a book written by Julia Alvarez, based on a true story. The book tells the story about the situation people lived in the Dominican Republic, in the 1960s, under the dictatorship of Trujillo.