One hundred years of solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a novel by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. It is considered a masterpiece of Spanish-American literature and universal, as well as one of the most translated and read works in Spanish. It was listed as one of the most important works in the Spanish language during the IV International Congress of the Spanish Language held in Cartagena de Indias in March 2007. It was included in the list of the 100 best novels in Spanish of the 20th century of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in the list of the 100 books of the 20th century of the French newspaper Le Monde and in the 100 best books of all times from the Norwegian Book Club.

The first edition of the novel was published in Buenos Aires in May 1967 by the Sudamericana publishing house, with a great reception from critics and the public, and had an initial edition of 8,000 copies. To date, more than 30 million copies have been sold and it has been translated into 35 languages.

Context

Gabriel García Márquez, the author.

The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by Gabriel García Márquez over eighteen months, between 1965 and 1966 in Mexico City, and was first published in mid-1967 in Buenos Aires. The original idea for this work arose in 1952 during a trip the author made to his hometown, Aracataca, in the company of his mother. In his first book, La hojarasca, he refers by to Macondo for the first time, and several of the characters in this work appear in some of his earlier stories and novels. Gabriel García Márquez initially introduced One Hundred Years of Solitude to Carlos Barral, who in the mid-1950s In the 1960s, he directed what was then the avant-garde Spanish-language publishing house Seix Barral in Barcelona, but he received a discouraging response: «I believe that this novel is not going to be successful. I believe that this novel is useless", although it has also been said that the publisher never read it. After the initial rejection, García Márquez sent the manuscript to the Editorial Sudamericana in Buenos Aires, where Francisco Porrúa, its director, decided to publish it. immediately: «It was not about reaching the end to find out if the novel could be published. The publication was already decided with the first line, with the first paragraph. I simply understood what any sensible editor would have understood in my place: that it was an exceptional work."

At first, he thought of naming his novel The House, but decided on One Hundred Years of Solitude to avoid confusion with the novel The Big House, published in 1954 by his friend, the writer Álvaro Cepeda Samudio. The first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude was published on June 5, 1967 by the Sudamericana publishing house in Buenos Aires, where the originals were sent by mail, divided into two parts because, due to economic difficulties, the writer was unable to pay for the first shipment in full. However, regarding the aforementioned and contradicting the anecdote promoted by García Márquez himself, the Argentine publisher who received the novel, Paco Porrúa, assured Xavi Ayén, journalist and Catalan researcher, who received the entire novel in a single package.

The novel was dedicated by its author to Jomi García Ascot and wife, María Luisa Elío. Both were writers, friends of García Márquez, immigrants in Mexico (like the author himself) and provided him with important support during the difficult times who lived while writing the book.

Composition

The book is made up of 20 untitled chapters, in which a story is narrated with a non-linear structure, since the events of the town and the Buendía family, as well as the names of the characters, are repeated over and over again. again, merging fantasy with reality. The first three chapters narrate the exodus of a group of families and the establishment of the town of Macondo, from chapter 4 to 16 it deals with the economic, political and social development of the town and the last four chapters narrate its decline.

One of the most relevant editions is the edition of the book in 2007, jointly published by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Spanish Language Academies to pay homage to its author, on the occasion of his 80th anniversary. age and 40 years after the publication of the book. On the occasion of that 2007 edition, Nicolás Pernett estimated that there were already more than one hundred editions by then and 50 million copies sold.

Plot

The book tells the story of the Buendía family over seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo.

José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán are cousins who got married full of omens and fears because of their kinship and the existing myth in the region that their offspring could have a pig's tail. In a cockfight in which Prudencio Aguilar's animal was killed, the latter, enraged by defeat, yelled at José Arcadio Buendía, owner of the victor: "Let's see if that rooster does your wife a favor," that the people of the town suspected that José Arcadio and Úrsula had not had relations in a year of marriage (due to Úrsula's fear that the offspring would be born with a pig's tail). José Arcadio Buendía challenges Prudencio to a duel and kills him by piercing his throat with a spear. From then on, Prudencio's ghost torments him, repeatedly appearing at his house trying to close the fatal wound with an esparto plug. Because of the harassment of Aguilar's ghost, José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán decide to go to the mountains. In the middle of the road, José Arcadio Buendía has a dream in which buildings with mirrored walls appear to him and, asking his name, they answer "Macondo". So, awake from the dream, he decides to stop the caravan, make a clearing in the jungle and live there.

The town is founded by different families led by José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, who had three children: José Arcadio, Aureliano and Amaranta (names that will be repeated in the following generations). Buendía is interested in the novelties that the gypsies bring to town (having a special friendship with Melquíades, who dies on various occasions and which would be fundamental to the fate of the family), and he ends his life tied to the chestnut tree as far as the ghost of his old enemy Prudencio Aguilar. Úrsula is the matriarch of the family, who has lived over a hundred years taking care of the family.

Little by little, the town grew and inhabitants from the other side of the swamp settled there. With them, commercial activity and construction in Macondo increased. Inexplicably, Rebeca arrives, whom the Buendías adopt as her daughter. Unfortunately, the plague of insomnia and the plague of forgetfulness caused by insomnia also come with it. The loss of memory forces its inhabitants to create a method to remember things and José Arcadio Buendía begins to label all the objects to remember their names; however, this method starts to fail when people also forget to read. One day, Melquíades returns from death with a drink that restores his memory, and in gratitude he is invited to stay in the house. At those times he writes some scrolls that could only be deciphered a hundred years later.

When the civil war broke out, the population took an active part in the conflict by sending a resistance army led by Colonel Aureliano Buendía to fight against the conservative regime. In the town, meanwhile, Arcadio (grandson of the founder and son of Pilar Ternera and José Arcadio) is appointed by his uncle as civil and military chief, and becomes a brutal dictator who is shot when conservatism retakes power.

The war continues and Colonel Aureliano is saved from dying on several occasions, until, tired of fighting senselessly, he arranges a peace treaty that will last until the end of the novel. After the treaty is signed, Aureliano shoots himself in the chest, but survives. Subsequently, the colonel returns home, distances himself from politics and dedicates himself to making gold fish locked up in his workshop, when a certain amount is finished, he melts the gold fish again, starting again from scratch in an endless cycle.

Aureliano Triste, one of the seventeen children of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, sets up an ice factory in Macondo, leaves his brother Aureliano Centeno in charge of the business and leaves town with the idea of bringing the train. He returns after a short time, fulfilling his mission, which generates a great development, since with the train, the telegraph, the gramophone and the cinema also arrive. Then the town becomes a center of activity in the region, attracting thousands of people from various places. Some recently arrived foreigners start a banana plantation near Macondo. The town prospers until a strike breaks out at the banana plantation; to put an end to it, the national army appears and the protesting workers are killed and thrown into the sea.

After the Banana Workers Massacre, the town is besieged by rains that last for four years, eleven months and two days. Úrsula says that he waits for the end of the rains to finally die. He is born Aureliano Babilonia, the last member of the Buendía line (initially referred to as Aureliano Buendía, until he later discovers from Melquíades' parchments that his paternal surname is Babilonia). When the rains end, Úrsula dies and Macondo is devastated.

The family is reduced and in Macondo they no longer remember the Buendía; Aureliano dedicates himself to deciphering Melquíades' parchments in the laboratory, until his aunt Amaranta Úrsula, with whom he has an affair, returns from Brussels. From this, Amaranta Úrsula becomes pregnant and has a child who is discovered at birth with a pig's tail; she bleeds to death after childbirth. Aureliano Babilonia, desperate, goes out to town knocking from door to door, but Macondo is now an abandoned town and he only finds a bartender who offers him brandy, falling asleep. When he wakes up, he remembers the newborn child and runs to look for him, but when he arrives, he finds that ants are eating him.

Aureliano remembers that this was foretold in Melquíades' parchments. With hurricane winds besieging Macondo and the place where he was present, he finished deciphering the story of the Buendías that was already there written in advance, finding that when he finished reading them, his own story would end and with him, the story of Macondo, which would be swept away by the wind and erased from any human memory... "because the lineages condemned to a hundred years of solitude did not have a second chance on earth."

Central Themes

Loneliness

During the novel, all its characters seem to be predestined to suffer from loneliness, as an innate characteristic of the Buendía family. The town itself lives isolated from modernity, always waiting for the arrival of the gypsies to bring new inventions; and oblivion, frequent in the recurring tragic events in the history of the culture that the work presents.

Mainly, the loneliness of Colonel Aureliano Buendía becomes evident, since his inability to express love makes him go off to war, leaving children in different places from different mothers; on some occasion he requested to draw a circle of three meters around him to avoid being approached and after signing peace, he shoots himself in the chest so as not to have to face his future, with such bad luck that he does not achieve his purpose and passes his old age in the alchemy laboratory making gold fish that he undoes and remakes in an honest pact with solitude. Other characters such as the founder of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía (who died alone, tied to a tree), Úrsula (who lived alone in the blindness of her old age), José Arcadio (son of the founder) and Rebeca (who went to living alone in another house for having "disgraced" the family), Amaranta (who remains and dies single and a virgin), Gerineldo Márquez (who expects a pension that never comes and Amaranta's love), Pietro Crespi (who commits suicide when rejected by Amaranta), José Arcadio Segundo (who since he saw a firing squad has never had a relationship with anyone and spent his last years locked up in Melquíades' room), Fernanda del Carpio (who was raised to be queen and the first time she leaves her house is at the age of 12), Remedios 'Meme' Buendía (who was sent to a convent, against her will, but completely resigned after the misfortune suffered by Mauricio Babilonia and is condemned to eternal silence), and Aureliano Babilonia (who spends locked up in Melquíades' room; and even there was a time when he lived completely alone in the Buendía house, after the murder of the last José Arcadio and before the arrival of Amaranta Úrsula) among others, suffer the consequences of his loneliness and abandonment.

The primary reason why his characters end up alone is their inability to love or their prejudices, which is broken by the marriage of Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula, which causes a gloomy ending in the story in which the only son procreated with love is devoured by ants. The lineage was condemned to a hundred years of solitude, for which they could not love. There is an exceptional case that is that of Aureliano Segundo with Petra Cotes, who love each other, but never have a child. The only option that a member of the family had to have a child with love was to have it with another member of the family, which was what happened with Aureliano Babilonia and his aunt Amaranta Úrsula, and also this only being generated with love was destined to die and thereby end the lineage.

Magical realism

Alejo Carpentier, in his prologue to The kingdom of this world (1949), makes a difference between European or nineteenth-century realism and distinguishes it from what he calls "the marvelous real& #3. 4; which speaks of Spanish-American reality, in contrast to the category called magical realism, which according to Barcia is a particular form of aesthetic perception and expression of Spanish-American reality, the latter being an aesthetic-literary category. For García Márquez himself, One Hundred Years de solitude is the best expression of magical realism since distinctive features are recognized, for example: an acclimatization of the unusual, perceived as inserted in reality. This presence is not perceived as abnormal or disruptive of order; instead, it is seen as amazing and attractive, and not scary, as is the case with the fantastic.

Incest

Relationships between relatives are marked within the myth of the birth of a son with a pig's tail; Despite this, these are present among various members of the family and various generations throughout the story.

The story begins with the relationship between two cousins: José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula, who grew up together in the old ranch, and have references to some of their uncles who had a son with a pig's tail. Later, José Arcadio (son of the founder, who in the novel is differentiated from his father by always naming him without his last name) marries Rebeca, adoptive daughter of José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula, in a supposed sibling relationship. When José Arcadio arrives unexpectedly at the house, they instantly fall in love and get married, something not approved by the family, especially Úrsula, who considers it a betrayal. Aureliano José falls in love with his aunt Amaranta in a frustrated relationship, going so far as to propose to her, but is rejected. Finally, the relationship between Amaranta Úrsula and her nephew Aureliano is presented, who do not know their relationship because Fernanda del Carpio, Aureliano's grandmother and mother of Amaranta Úrsula, hid the truth of his origin, stating that he had been found in a basket that floated in the river.

Religious references

An association can be made with passages from the Bible and Catholic tradition, such as its evolution from creation (Genesis) to restoration (Revelation). Reference is made due to the similarity of the story to events such as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary due to the elevation of Remedios la bella, to the Exodus through the journey made by the founding families from Guajira through the mountains until they reached the swamp, to the universal Flood through the rains that besiege Macondo for almost 5 years, to the plagues when the population suffers from insomnia and amnesia and to original sin with the feared punishment of incest.

There are multiple samples of Roman Catholicism in the work, in characters such as Fernanda and her father, the "major mass" in which she turned eating at the Buendías, the plaster San José full of gold coins, or like when Father Nicanor Reyna arrives in Macondo to officiate the wedding between Aureliano Buendía and Remedios Moscote and finds that the town lives in sin, subject to natural law, without baptizing the children or sanctifying the holidays, and decides to stay to evangelize him. It is then that the village church is built, attracting the faithful with the display of levitation achieved by drinking chocolate.

Narrative technique

In One Hundred Years of Solitude a narrative technique is used that resorts to a particular tone, space and rhythm of the novel. Taken together, these three elements allow the reader to easily become familiar with the story.

The narrative tone is clearly defined by a third person or passive heterodiegetic (external to the story) or omniscient narrator, who recounts the events without making judgments and without making a difference between what is real and what is fantastic. From the beginning, the narrator knows the story and tells it in an imperturbable and natural way, even in those episodes in which tragic events are related. This distance from the facts allows the narrator to maintain objectivity throughout the work.

The fictional space is the universe shown by the narrator, in which events take place. Macondo is born and dies in the work, where the characters are included and in which it is observed that everything that happens externally is less dense and consistent within the story.

It must be said that the message of this story is very clear but at the same time complex, the world in its origins was a world of peace and tranquility but, over the years, technology has been destroying it. When the government and the authority, who before was José Arcadio Buendía, try to organize the town, they bring about the destruction of themselves and the only thing they achieve is to transform that town that was once a paradise.

We can affirm this, when it is said that no one had died in Macondo but since the dispute between liberals and conservatives comes and the military force appears, Macondo is involved in a chaos of total slaughter.

The story takes place in a town called Macondo, created by Gabriel García Márquez. It is here where the events take place, which although they are supported by real facts, are transformed into an ideal by the author's fantasy, where everything is possible: beings more than centuries old, rains that last more than four years, apparitions and dialogues with the dead, flying carpets etc.

In its beginnings, Macondo was an "ideal world", a paradise: "Macondo was then a village of twenty mud and cane houses built on the banks of a river with clear waters that rushed down a bed of polished stones, white and huge as prehistoric eggs".

"In a few years, Macondo was the most orderly and industrious village of any known until then for its 300 inhabitants. It was truly a happy village, where no one was over thirty and where no one had died.

But over the course of the story this world of magical realities is affected when "evil" in Macondo, the civil wars, the banana fever, the arrival of people from different places as a result of the banana company, political hatred, poverty, killings, droughts, the arrival of the railway, which only brings misfortune and death. Thus, the imaginary and the real are linked to the history of Colombia and the ills that affect all of Latin America. And ending with the total extermination of the Macondo village.

"Macondo was in ruins. In the swamps of the streets there was left pieces of broken furniture, animal skeletons covered with red lilies, the last memories of the hordes of upstarts who fled from Macondo as recklessly as they had arrived. "Macondo was already a terrifying whirlpool of dust and rubble...".

Finally, the narrative rhythm gives the story a dynamism that is complemented by the tone. In a few words, the narrator tells many things, condensing the information and showing the essential details of the story.

Throughout the work, various literary figures are used:

• Oxymoron (presents exaggerations using incongruous and contradictory words): "The enchanted region that José Arcadio Buendía exploited in the foundation's times, and where the banana plantations later thrived, was a tremedal of putrefied strains".

• Synesthesia (metaphore that presents bodily sensations of one sense in another): «delicate wind of light».

• Anáfora (repetition of a word to give more emphasis to the phrase): "...he saw the dead men, the dead women, the dead children who were to be thrown into the sea as a banan of rejection.".

• (direct comparison): «Amaranta Ursula was closing his fingers like a mollusk».

• Epifonema (frase you want to leave a teaching): «Col. Aureliano Buendía barely understood that the secret of a good old age is nothing but an honest covenant with loneliness».

Time and space

The novel is set in Macondo, a fictitious place that reflects many of the customs and anecdotes lived by García Márquez during his childhood in his hometown, Aracataca, on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. The multifaceted sense of time that runs between the eternal, the linear and the cyclical and a rhythmic prose close to the oral tradition give the novel its distinctive character as a cryptic myth that led critics to consider it one of the founding works of the genre. literary known as magical realism.

Geographic location

The references in the novel place Macondo somewhere on the Colombian Caribbean Coast between the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta without a coast on the sea, an area corresponding to the municipalities of Zona Bananera and Aracataca (author's hometown).

Historical Time

One Hundred Years of Solitude can be located in the history of Colombia between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century, a time clearly recognizable by the civil wars that took place throughout the second half of the 19th century that confronted the nascent liberal and conservative parties, which debated the ideologies of the federalist and centralist regime in the country. During the Regeneration, President Rafael Núñez promulgated the 1886 constitution, which established a centralist regime in mainly political and economic matters, initiating the conservative republic at that time (which lasted until 1930) and having Rafael Uribe Uribe as its main detractor., who leads the civil war of 1895 and the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902). García Márquez recognized that General Uribe Uribe was the inspiration for the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía.

In 1906 the railroad that connected Santa Marta and Ciénaga (Magdalena) was built and at that time the United Fruit Company was established in the country for banana exploitation, a situation that brought rapid development to the region. The inhumane treatment of the workers forced them to organize a strike in November 1928, which triggered the events known as the Massacre of the Banana Plants, narrated in the novel. The gatherings of the four discussants (Alfonso, Álvaro, Germán and Gabriel) and the Catalan scholar (Ramón Vinyes) took place in Barranquilla in the early 1950s, when García Márquez worked in the newspaper El Heraldo.

Cyclic time

Despite being set in a recognizable historical framework, history seems static as events occur that repeat themselves cyclically over and over again. Gabriel García Márquez endowed the characters that appear at the beginning of the work with a certain personality, a personality that is reflected in each new character that is born and adopts the same name as their ancestor, as in the case of the Aurelianos and the José Arcadios. This same characteristic is present in other situations such as incestuous relationships and the lonely destinies of its protagonists, in a vicious circle that only ends when the town falls into decline and the end of the Buendía family approaches.

Characters

Genealogical tree of the Buendía family.
First generation: José Arcadio Buendía, Ursula Iguarán.
Second generation: José Arcadio Buendia, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, Amaranta, Rebeca.
Third generation: Arcadio, Aureliano José, 17 "Aurelianos".
Fourth generation: Remedios, la bella, José Arcadio Segundo, Aureliano Segundo.
Fifth generation: Renata Remedios (Meme), José Arcadio, Amaranta Ursula.
Sixth generation: Aureliano Babylon.
Seventh generation: Aureliano/Rodrigo.

First generation

José Arcadio Buendía

Patriarch of the Buendía family and founder of Macondo. At the age of 19, he marries his cousin, Úrsula Iguarán. He is a person of strong character, of immovable will, of great physical strength, with extravagant illusions, great interest in science, mechanics and alchemy, idealist and adventurer. He leaves the old town where they lived with his family as a result of being harassed by the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio had murdered.

Due to his strong inclination for science and his spirit of explaining certain mysteries to himself, he socializes with the gypsies, consolidating a great friendship with the leader of that nomadic tribe, Melquíades. Later, Melquíades would have a great influence on the entire lineage of the Buendía family due to many aspects, daguerreotypes or parchments to name a few.

He ends up tied to a tree due to his dementia and subsequently dies. He stays in an eternal room with his longtime rival, Prudencio Aguilar. When he leaves, it rains yellow flowers.

Ursula Iguaran

Cousin and wife of José Arcadio Buendía. In addition to being the spiritual engine of the family, she is its economic head. She is characterized as an enterprising and hard-working woman who, with her efforts and her prosperous companies, pushes the entire Buendía family forward. She has a strong behavior and seeks the well-being of all; but she constantly suffers from being the "voice of reason in a family of madmen," as she puts it. She is a parsimonious woman and never gives up in the face of the adversities that plague the Buendía family. She was to greatly influence the thoughts and decisions that the family members would later undertake. In her last years, from being a strong and lively woman, she becomes the object with which Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula would amuse themselves. During the deluge, she little by little succumbs to senile dementia and completely loses her sight; however, she always maintains her spirit that characterizes her. She lives approximately 120 years of age. During her funeral, suffocating heat invades Macondo.

Second generation

José Arcadio

He is the eldest son of Úrsula Iguarán and José Arcadio Buendía, he has great willpower, inherited from his father, and a way of being impulsive. He is in a relationship with a much older family friend, Pilar Ternera, but she leaves her after impregnating her. He leaves his family because of his attraction to a young gypsy girl, but surprisingly returns many years later as a burly womanizer, speaking in sailors' language, with children-on-a-cross and tattooed, claiming in his jargon that he has sailed the seas of the world and has circled the planet 65 times. He marries Rebeca and, because of the scandal, they end up living away from the family. He then begins to work the lands adjacent to his house and then to usurp the best lands from his neighbors in Macondo. The theft is legalized by his son Arcadio, by creating a registry office while he was in charge of civil and military chief, but the lands are returned many years later by his brother Aureliano to their original owners. The death of José Arcadio was never clarified: some suppose that he was murdered by his wife Rebeca after returning from hunting, the majority, that it was a suicide under the same circumstances; the blood from his body runs through the entire town in a thread until it reaches the family home, where her mother Úrsula was, who runs the road in the opposite direction, until she finds the body of her son. The smell of gunpowder from his body lingers in Macondo for years, even after being buried, until the banana industry engineers cover his grave with a concrete shell.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía

Illustration of Colonel Aureliano Buendía in his workshop.

He is the second child in the family and the first person to be born in Macondo. He has the mentality and philosophical nature of his father, he can predict events, he has a strange way of being solitary and withdrawn, although of an implacable character. In his childhood he had the power to move objects and cause situations similar to paranormal phenomena. He learns metallurgy and silversmithing from his father, and dedicates himself to making gold fish as a trade. He has a son with Pilar Ternera, whom they will call Aureliano José. He marries Remedios Moscote, a girl barely nine years old, whom he widowed shortly after his marriage. Seeing the trap of his father-in-law, Apolinar Moscote, during the elections, he joins the liberal party when the civil war begins, as a colonel in command of the revolutionary forces, in a mixture of passion for weapons and science. He fights against the Conservative government in 32 civil wars (all of which he loses), and takes his fight to Central America, from where he campaigned to overthrow all Conservative governments on the continent. On different occasions he avoided death and firing squad (a moment to which reference is made in many moments of the work, as in the beginning). He even survived suicide, shooting himself at a point on his chest painted by a doctor who guessed his intentions at his request, a point at which no vital organs were affected. The doctor considered this action "his masterpiece of his" from him. The colonel had 17 children with 17 different women during the war. After enduring the pain and emotional hardship that war brings, he loses all interest in the battle, signs a peace treaty (the Neerlandia treaty) and returns home. During his old age, he loses all capacity for emotion and memory, dedicating every day to his old work of making gold fish in his old silver shop; thus he reveals his greatest pain, the inability to love. He dies while urinating, after sitting at the door of the house and watching a parade go by, in a brief paragraph that does not provide further details. He was the only one Fernanda didn't target for her tantrums. It is the deepest example of loneliness in the work.

The colonel, along with Gerineldo Márquez, is mentioned in the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. According to what García Márquez stated in the book The smell of the guava, Colonel Aureliano Buendía is an allusion to General Rafael Uribe Uribe, both for the colonel's physique, which completely corresponds to that of the general (thin, bony build, sharp mustache, penetrating gaze), as well as for being both liberals and for the fact that they lost all the civil wars they started (15 for the general and 32 for the colonel). Both Colonel Aureliano Buendía and General Rafael Uribe Uribe joined the triumphant federalism in Central America in search of followers to develop a continental plan to overthrow conservative regimes. Both also renounced the war as a means to resolve the country's political and social conflicts. Unlike the colonel, Uribe Uribe was assassinated.

Amaranta

The youngest daughter of José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, Amaranta, grew up with Rebeca; However, her feelings for her adoptive sister change before the appearance of Pietro Crespi in the life of the Buendías, since they both become interested in him during their adolescence and then a rivalry between them is born. Amaranta rejects any man who seeks her out, including Pietro Crespi, who woos her after Rebeca dumps him, but rejects him in such a way that he makes the Italian kill himself for her. She has a brief romance with her nephew Aureliano José, whom she raised after his brother went to war, and in a final attempt to leave her loneliness, she touches the grandson of her nephew José Arcadio (son of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo) inappropriately when she is three years old, was also wanted by Aureliano's best friend, Gerineldo Márquez. She dies unmarried and a virgin after having knitted and undone, for a little over four years, her own shroud. She is an example of a woman who rejects love because she is afraid to face her own heart.

Cardigan

Rebeca is an orphan girl who arrives in Macondo, after a prognosis made by Aureliano Buendía, from the town of Manaure in the company of some fur dealers, when she was about 11 years old, after losing her parents, whose bones keep in a bag. She brings a letter explaining that she was the daughter of Úrsula Iguarán's second-degree cousins named Nicanor Ulloa and Rebeca Montiel, whom neither she nor her husband remember. Rebeca has the habit of eating dirt and lime from the walls. She does it secretly, from which it follows that her parents or those who raised her have reprimanded her for it. She also has a habit of sucking her thumb, even into her adulthood. She returns to both habits every time she suffers an emotional crisis. Upon the return of José Arcadio, whose manliness causes a tremendous shock to him, he rejects his fiancé Pietro Crespi and who, next to José Arcadio, seems to him a "currutaco de alfeñique", for whom he had engaged in a duel to the death with his half-sister Amaranta. After marrying José Arcadio, both are banished from the house by Úrsula for the "inconceivable lack of respect" they had committed. After the strange death of her husband, since the author does not reveal the culprit at any time and the possibility that Rebeca herself is the murderer is even hinted at, Rebeca shuts herself up and lives in solitude and bitterness with her maid, Argénida, for the rest of his life. She is only heard from again when her nephew Aureliano Triste finds her when entering her house; and when she dies, many years later, she is decrepit, suffering from ringworm and sucking her thumb.

Third generation

Arcadio

The son of Pilar Ternera and José Arcadio, he always thought his parents were José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula. At birth, Úrsula did not want to accept him, but José Arcadio Buendía welcomed him, gave him his last name and took him to live in the house. Úrsula agreed on the condition that his origins not be revealed to her. He is an impulsive school teacher, but he assumes the leadership of Macondo when Colonel Aureliano Buendía leaves and entrusts him with this mission. He becomes a dictator using his students as his personal army. He is shot by Captain Roque Carnicero when the conservative regime assumes power in Macondo.

Aureliano José

Son of Pilar Ternera and Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Contrary to his half-brother Arcadio, who never found out he was the son of Pilar Ternera, Aureliano José knew his true origins. He accompanies his father in some wars, but returns to the town because he is in love with his aunt Amaranta, who raised him since he was born, and who rejects him. Aureliano José dies after being shot by a conservative captain of the guard during the war, Aquiles Ricardo, when he refused to be searched at the theater entrance, even though he was unarmed.

The 17 Aurelians

During his 32 civil wars, Colonel Aureliano Buendía had 17 children with 17 different women, with whom he spent only one night. This is explained by the author due to a belief, according to which, young women were sent to sleep with the soldiers to have strong children that would improve the race, and the Buendía house is visited by 17 different mothers asking Úrsula Iguarán to baptize to his children. Úrsula baptizes all of them with the name of Aureliano and the last name of their respective mothers, since they were never recognized by their father. Later, all the children return to the Buendía house twice: in the first time, Aureliano Triste stays in Macondo and in the second time, Aureliano Centeno does. On a third occasion, Aureliano Serrador and Aureliano Arcaya arrive in Macondo; finally they are assassinated by the government or by the "gringos", supposedly due to a threat from the colonel. They are identified by having been marked with the Ash Wednesday cross on their foreheads, which could never be erased. Aureliano Amador survives the massacres after hiding in the jungle of the mountains, and many years later, as an old man, he returns home, meeting Aureliano Babilonia and José Arcadio, who did not know him and threw him out believing he was a homeless man., then two police officers who persecuted him for years killed him with two Mauser shots to the head.

Fourth generation

Remedios the Beauty

Remedios is the daughter of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de la Piedad, from whom she inherited her beauty, however she is considered the most beautiful woman in the world and for this reason four men tragically die trying to possess her, because she remains oblivious to the conventional things. She was the only person that Colonel Aureliano Buendía considered lucid in that house despite the fact that everyone else considered her mentally disabled, since they had to take care of her so that she did not draw little animals on the walls with a wand smeared with their feces and ate with hands without using cutlery, in addition to other eccentricities. Her smell (an unmistakable, desperate smell) and her presence upset the men (outside her family, except the 17 Aurelianos) of Macondo and the banana plantation. It is said that she had powers of death since all the men who wanted her ended up dying. One morning, Remedios ascends body and soul to heaven before Fernanda's gaze, who is envious and upset because she takes her sheets.

José Arcadio Segundo

José Arcadio Segundo is the twin brother of Aureliano Segundo, son of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de la Piedad. Úrsula believes that both were exchanged in their childhood, since José Arcadio begins to show the characteristics of the Aurelianos of the family, growing up as a thoughtful and calm person. In his childhood he witnessed a firing squad, and for this reason he was always terrified that they would bury him alive. Later he began to help Father Antonio Isabel at mass, who introduced him to cockfighting. He made the first and only ship that was in Macondo, in which he brought the French matrons. He plays an important role in the banana workers' strike and is one of the two survivors of the massacre (the other was a child he carried in his arms during the proclamation of the decree allowing the massacre). After that, he dedicates the rest of his days to the study of Melquíades' manuscripts, and tutor of little Aureliano. He claims until the end of his days & # 34; They killed them all. There were more than three thousand, and they threw them into the sea". He dies at the same time with his twin brother.

Aureliano Segundo

Of the two brothers, Aureliano Segundo is the most boisterous and impulsive, like all the José Arcadios in the family. He takes Petra Cotes as his lover, even during his marriage to Fernanda del Carpio, whom he meets at the bloody carnival. While he lives with Petra, he notices that his cattle reproduce uncontrollably, and with that he lives in times of abundance, to the point of lining the walls with bills. After the deluge, his fortune disappears. He tries for a long time to find the treasure that Úrsula hid until its owner appeared, without success, so he dedicates his last years of life to raffling off the few animals that lived after the flood, with the aim that his daughter Amaranta Úrsula can go study in Brussels. He dies at the same time with his brother. During the funeral they get confused, their bodies are swapped, and one is buried in the other's grave.

Fifth generation

Renata Remedios (Meme)

Meme is the first daughter of Fernanda del Carpio and Aureliano Segundo. She is sent to school to learn the clavichord and graduates. While she dedicates herself to this instrument with "uncompromising discipline", she also enjoys parties and exhibitions following the excesses of her father. She meets and falls in love with Mauricio Babilonia, an apprentice mechanic from the banana company's workshops always surrounded by yellow butterflies. However, when Fernanda discovers that they have had sexual relations, she asks the mayor for a night guard at the house, on the pretext that her chickens were stolen, which shoots Mauricio Babilonia during one of her nocturnal visits and leaves him disabled. and sends Meme to the convent, without notifying Aureliano Segundo. Meme remains mute for the rest of her life, not because of the trauma she caused him, but as a sign of rebellion and determination. A few months later, she finds out that she is pregnant and has a son, whom the nuns call Aureliano in honor of her grandfather. This son will be taken to Macondo thanks to a nun from the convent, who spoke with Fernanda del Carpio. Renata dies at an old age in a gloomy hospital in Krakow, never uttering a single word, always thinking of Mauricio Babilonia.

José Arcadio

José Arcadio, called the same as his predecessors according to family tradition, has the personality of the previous Arcadios. He was livid, languid, with a stunned look and weak lips, pale hands, with green veins and parasitic fingers, he used to have asthmatic insomnia. He is raised by Úrsula Iguarán, his great-great-grandmother, who wants him to become a pope so that he ends up becoming a virtuous man, completely removed from the four calamities that Úrsula thought had brought disgrace to her family (war, the fighting cocks, the women of low life and the "delusional companies", so that he could dedicate his life to restoring the prestige of his family. To do this, since he was a child Úrsula taught him (without it being really necessary, since from a very young age he showed he was afraid of them) to be afraid of the four calamities. He instilled in him, for example, that if he slept with a woman from the street he would contaminate his blood (and even more so, that if he slept with a woman from the house he would have descendants with the tail of a pig); that if he went into the business of fighting cocks he would cause the death of innocent people and he would feel guilty for the rest of his life; that if he simply touched a firearm he would be sentenced to twenty years of war; and that if he embarked on "delusional" companies, he would only end up unhappy and insane. Úrsula also forced him to sleep confined to a corner of his room on a stool, telling him that only there would he be safe from the ghosts that had haunted the house since sunset, and watched over by plaster saints, with the warning that if he during the night he would behave badly in any way, the plaster saints would tell Úrsula the bad things he had done, so that he always fell asleep motionless and sweating with fear, and almost always had nightmares during the night. And as a final part of his daily routine, every morning, Úrsula forced him to go out into the patio to turn his body into a pope; he combed his hair like a pope, bathed him with Agua de Florida so that his body and clothes would always have the fragrance of those of a pope, cut and polished his nails and hands so that they were as neat and clean as those of a pope, and he rubbed his teeth with coal dust so that his smile would become radiant like a dad's. This lasts until one day José Arcadio is offered the opportunity to study a seminary to polish his knowledge to become pope, for which he is sent to Rome, but as soon as he arrives there he leaves the seminary and begins to support a whole epistolary farce to convince his mother that his seminary studies were going well, culminating in his mother's death. When he returns from Rome he takes over the Buendía house, he despises the young Aureliano, who cloisters himself studying the Melquíades parchments and avoiding José Arcadio. He is a nasty, self-centered man with noble man's traits and a taste for questionable company. He was in need of money not only to live but to keep the house in order. Unfortunately and by chance, he discovers the treasure so jealously hidden by his great-great-grandmother: "they didn't have to turn on the light, it was enough for them to lift the plates from the corner where Úrsula's bed had always been, there were the three canvas bags closed with wire, and inside them, the seven thousand two hundred and fourteen doubloons of four, which continued to glow like embers in the dark" "the discovery of the treasure was like a deflagration" José Arcadio begins to waste it on ostentatious and ridiculous parties in the company of children and adolescents who also served as servants and took care of his personal hygiene: "On several occasions they got into the albarca, to soap him from head to toe, while he floated face up thinking about Amaranta". Eventually, a rapprochement develops between him and Aureliano Babilonia, the nephew he despises, whom he considers leaving him a business, with the gold he found, because he had planned to go to Naples before Christmas. Unfortunately before being able to leave, José Arcadio was drowned in the pool of the bathroom of the house by four children whom he had previously expelled and whipped in the last "saturnalia", after the murder, they took the three sacks of I pray that only they and the victim knew where they were hiding. Aureliano, locked in his room, didn't notice anything.

Amaranta Úrsula

Amaranta Úrsula is the youngest daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. She has the same characteristics as Úrsula (the matriarch), who dies when she is just a girl. She never finds out that the child sent to the Buendía house is her nephew, Meme's son, with whom she had a child, not like the others, but the fruit of love.

After spending her childhood in a convent in Belgium, she returns from Europe with her husband, Gastón, bringing a large cage with fifty canaries, with which she hoped to repopulate Macondo with birds, which she no longer had, and with an incredible vitality and entrepreneurship, but insufficient to rescue the Buendía family mansion from its abandonment. Gastón returned to Brussels on business, waiting for an airplane that he had acquired and indifferently took the news about his wife's affair with Aureliano Babilonia. She bled to death from the delivery of her only child, Aureliano, who represented the end of the Buendía lineage.

Sixth generation

Aureliano Babilonia

Aureliano is the son of Renata Remedios Buendía (Meme) and Mauricio Babilonia. He is sent home and hidden from the rest of the world by his grandmother, Fernanda, who invents the story that he was found floating in a basket and hides him in the silver shop, although his grandfather discovers him three years later. His personality is similar to that of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. He barely gets to know Úrsula, who dies during his childhood. He is the wisest man of all the lineage, who knows everything without having a reason for it (as he said, & # 34; everything is known & # 34;). He establishes a great friendship with José Arcadio Segundo, who tells him the true story of the massacre of the banana company. While other family members leave and return, Aureliano remains in the house. He only ventures into the empty town after Fernanda's death. He spent his entire childhood and adolescence locked up reading Melquíades' writings and trying to decipher his scrolls. Many times the ghost of the gypsy Melquíades (of whom he had memories prior to his birth) appears to him, who gives him clues to locate the books that would allow him to decipher the scrolls. In the Catalan wise man's bookstore he meets his four friends: Álvaro, Alfonso, Gabriel and Germán. He starts visiting brothels. He falls in love with Amaranta Úrsula, with whom he begins to have a clandestine relationship but when Gastón leaves they can love each other freely. It is the great example of love in the work. They have long suspected that they are brothers. They have a son, whom they call Aureliano (despite the fact that Amaranta Úrsula wanted him to be Rodrigo), who is born with a pig's tail. Amaranta Úrsula dies, and Aureliano goes out to town, imprisoned by the pain that his death causes him. At that moment he shouts from the four winds: "friends are sons of bitches", a phrase that demonstrates the great reflection of loneliness in his heart. When he returns home, he sees that his son Aureliano is dead and that he is being devoured by all the ants in the world and then he remembers the epigraph from Melquíades's manuscripts: "The first of the family is tied to a tree and the last one is being eaten by ants", and he realizes that the entire destiny of the Buendía family is written on those parchments. Without any difficulty, he deciphers the scrolls aloud, finding the first signs of his existence in his grandfather when he was looking for Fernanda del Carpio, the moment of her conception by Mauricio Babilonia and Meme in the bathroom of the Buendía house and he realizes that Amaranta Úrsula Buendía was her aunt, while Macondo begins to be destroyed by the wind, because according to the author "it was written that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would disappear from the face of the earth and be erased from the memory of men at the moment that Aureliano Babilonia deciphered the last page of the parchments, since the lineages condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second chance on earth". At this point the character is called by the surname of his parent and concludes the novel.

Seventh generation

Rodrigo/Aureliano

The son of Aureliano Babilonia and his aunt, Amaranta Úrsula, he was born with a pig's tail, just as Úrsula predicted it would happen, and represents the end of the Buendía family. His mother wants him to be called Rodrigo, but in contrast, his father wants him to be named Aureliano, in accordance with the Buendía family tradition. As the whole family was condemned to one hundred years of solitude, they will not be able to survive, so they die devoured by the red ants that had invaded the house during the flood, just as the epigraph of Melquíades' parchments predicted: " The first of the lineage is tied to a tree and the last one is being eaten by ants".

Characters outside the family

Remedies Moscote

Remedios is the youngest daughter of the mayor of the Conservative government in Macondo, Apolinar Moscote. She is a beautiful 9-year-old girl with green eyes and lily skin. Aureliano falls in love with her despite her childhood, so the wedding must be postponed until she reaches puberty. She wins the affection of the Buendía family due to her persevering and docile manner, which is why her name is used in the next generations. She dies very young with two twins in her womb. Her death makes Amaranta feel guilty, since she is praying for something to happen that prevents the marriage between Rebeca and Pietro Crespi. Úrsula orders a severe mourning with closed doors and without speaking out loud for a year and located a daguerreotype of Remedios that would be lit forever.

Fernanda del Carpio

Fernanda is the cachaca of the story. She has a dark, sad, affected and capricious character, with airs of grandeur and belonging to royalty. She is very religious, bordering on fanaticism, she made the act of eating in the kitchen a "high mass"; in the main dining room. She retains the "slurred" talk; and "anachronistic" of the inhabitants of the Andean or interior region of Colombia, where she is from. The daughter of a noble but impoverished family, she dedicated her childhood and adolescence to study in a convent, where she was prepared to be queen. When she finished her studies, her mother had already died and from then on she continued to live in silence with her father, Fernando del Carpio, while surviving by making funeral palms, until Aureliano Segundo arrived to marry her after she and her caravan broke into in the carnivals of Macondo, where the queen was Remedios, the beauty, and the caravan arrived announcing Fernanda del Carpio as the most beautiful woman in the world. She marries Aureliano Segundo even though he continues to live with his concubine, Petra Cotes. Her arrival at the Buendía house marks the beginning of Macondo's decline. Her character is also dominant, neurotic and perfectionist, with which she managed to impose her will in the Buendía house (although she never messed with Colonel Aureliano Buendía out of fear). She does everything possible to hide her flaws from the world, because she can't stand being imperfect. Upon discovering her daughter's love affair with Mauricio Babilonia, she causes him to be shot by the authorities, as a result of which he is disabled and considered forever a chicken thief. Showing the soulless side of her, she banishes her daughter to a convent in the interior of the country, where Meme decides not to say another word and ends her life in complete solitude, in a dark hospital in Krakow. In her last days she lives alone in the house with Aureliano Babilonia, her grandson whom she never loved or recognized. She dies four months before her son José Arcadio returned from Rome.

Prudencio Aguilar

He was a resident of the old town of José Arcadio Buendía, who murdered him as a result of a lawsuit between the two during a cockfight. His ghost ends up making José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula leave the town and found Macondo.

Melquíades

Melquíades is one of the gypsies who visit Macondo every year in March, bringing innovative items from various parts of the world and selling many new inventions, including two magnets (which José Arcadio Buendía acquired thinking of becoming a millionaire, believing that would attract gold), a gigantic magnifying glass (which José Arcadio Buendía thought to use as a weapon of war) and an alchemy laboratory, establishing a great friendship with him. His origin is not made clear in the novel, although he spoke and wrote Sanskrit, which was his native language, as well as Spanish, and it can be assumed that he was a native of the Indian subcontinent. Later, the gypsies report that Melquíades dies in Singapore after an epidemic, but suddenly returns to live with the Buendía family (because according to him "he could not bear the loneliness of death"). On some scrolls he writes encrypted verses in his mother tongue in which he predicts the history of the Buendía family, which are deciphered by Aureliano Babilonia one hundred years later.

Pilar Ternera

Pilar is a happy, wise, and determined woman who arrives in Macondo with her parents on the expedition that founded the town. She becomes the concubine of the brothers José Arcadio and Aureliano, to each of whom she gives a son, Arcadio and Aureliano José (who ended up handing over the Buendía house), respectively. Pilar reads and predicts the future in letters, and then she is the manager of a brothel. She lives to be over 140 years old and is buried in a large hole sitting in her rocking chair. She is a lover and the best adviser to the Buendías.

Santa Sofia de la Piedad

Santa Sofía is Arcadio's wife (not his wife, since they never married). She is the daughter of a shopkeeper, she becomes Arcadio's lover at the request of Pilar Ternera, after Arcadio begins to persecute her without knowing her blood relationship. She is the mother of Remedios, the beautiful (name given against the last will expressed by Arcadio, however coinciding with his last thought) and the twins José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo. She plays a secondary role in the novel, doing housework during the time Úrsula is ill. She has the faculty of "not existing except at the right time", and in her youth she was very beautiful and from her she inherits the beauty of her Remedios from her. She leaves during the last years of Macondo's existence, unable to combat the imminent natural disaster that was consuming the Buendía house.

Nicanor Ulloa and Rebeca Montiel

Biological parents of Rebeca Buendía, her remains were found in a canvas bag that Rebeca brought when she arrived in Macondo, they are buried next to the tomb of Melquíades.

Pietro Crespi

Pietro is an Italian musician and merchant who comes to install the pianola that would animate the inauguration of the Buendía house. He also teaches the fashionable dances to Rebeca and Amaranta for the party. After a short trip to Italy, he returns to stay in Macondo attracted by Rebeca, establishes a musical school and makes donations to the only Catholic church in the town to finish its construction. He becomes engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who is also in love with him, makes Rebeca's life miserable, even threatening her with death to prevent her from marrying the Italian. When Rebeca leaves him to marry José Arcadio, Pietro woos Amaranta, who, some time after having accepted her love, takes revenge on him by cruelly rejecting him. Discouraged by the loss of the love of both sisters, Crespi commits suicide by cutting his wrists with a knife on the day of all the dead, at the desk in the back room.

Gerineldo Márquez

The best friend of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, and his right hand in the war. He was in love with Amaranta all his life, and despite the fact that they maintained a kind of courtship, she rejected him. He died of old age during the flood thinking of Amaranta and waiting for the life pension that never came.

Petra Cotes

Petra is a determined and generous mulatto, lover of José Arcadio Segundo and Aureliano Segundo (of both at the same time, since she could not tell them apart; they were identical twins, children of Arcadio and Santa Sofía de la Piedad), but staying finally with Aureliano Segundo. They continue to see each other, even after Aureliano Segundo's marriage, who finally goes to live with her. This embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio, for the rest of her life. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals improve their fecundity and reproduce at an astonishing rate, but the animals die during the deluge that lasts for almost five years. Petra makes money selling raffle tickets, and provides food baskets for Fernanda and her family after Aureliano Segundo's death. She and Aureliano Segundo considered Fernanda "the daughter they never had."

Mr. Herbert and Mr. Brown

Mr. Herbert is an American who came to the Buendía house one day for lunch. After eating bananas (guineo or plantain) for the first time, he manages the establishment of a company for the exploitation of the banana plantation in Macondo. The banana company is run by Mr. Brown, its president. Meme offers her friendship to Patricia, her daughter. When José Arcadio Segundo collaborates in the company workers' strike, they set a trap for the strikers and shoot at them at the town station, piling the corpses on a train and secretly dumping them into the sea. José Arcadio Segundo, and the seven-year-old boy he carried on his shoulders while the decree allowing the execution was read, and Aureliano Babilonia, whose great-uncle José Arcadio Segundo, were the only ones who knew that the strikers had been shot in complicity with the banana company. Mr. Brown condemns the flood that lasted 4 years bringing with it the decline of Macondo.

Mauritius

Mauricio is a bold and honest mechanic's apprentice in the banana company's workshops. He apparently descends from gypsies, and has the exceptional characteristic of being constantly followed by swarms of yellow butterflies. Mauricio begins a passionate relationship with Meme, until Fernanda discovers them. Mauricio continues sneaking into her house to visit her, until the mayor's guard requested by Fernanda shoots him, mistaking him for a chicken thief (all set up by Fernanda) and he spends the rest of his life an invalid. Meme becomes pregnant by Mauricio Babilonia and the son, Aureliano Babilonia, is secretly raised in the Buendía house. He dies old and alone, without a single complaint, always thinking of Renata Remedios, disowned by the town as a chicken thief and unable to get rid of the yellow butterflies that followed him to death.

Gaston

Gastón is a Belgian aviator and adventurer, husband of Amaranta Úrsula. They get married in Europe and settle in Macondo. Gastón is about fifteen years older than Amaranta Úrsula. When he realizes that his wife plans to stay in Macondo, he arranges for a plane to be sent for an airmail service, but the plane is mistakenly sent to Tanganyika, where it is delivered to the scattered community of the Makondos. When he writes to Amaranta Úrsula to inform her that he will return to Macondo, Amaranta responds with a contradictory letter in which she reiterated her love for him and her desire to see him again, at the same time that she confessed her love for Aureliano Babylon. Gastón takes the news naturally, sending them a letter wishing them happiness and, six months later, he requests the shipment of his velocipede, due to its sentimental value.

Nigromanta

She was the great-granddaughter of the oldest Black West Indian alive at the time when Aureliano Babilonia began to tour the town after the death of José Arcadio. She was the only one who remembered Colonel Aureliano Buendía, so they became friends. After his death, Aureliano continued to have contact with Nigromanta, a large black woman who made broths. They maintain a more or less stable relationship, but only because Aureliano couldn't bear not being able to be without Amaranta Úrsula. Some time later she provides the same service to Gabriel. Nigromanta is a reference to Negra Eufemia, a famous pimp in Barranquilla in the mid-20th century.

The Catalan sage

He was the old man who ran the store where Aureliano bought the necessary books to decipher Melquíades' parchments, in the corner of town where dreams were deciphered in the days of the banana company. His bookstore was made up of very old books, and practically no one visited him, except for Aureliano Babilonia and his four friends. His main activity in Macondo consisted of writing three drawers of books. The nostalgia was so strong that he returned to his hometown, but there he felt nostalgic for Macondo, and this double nostalgia confused him so much that he lost his sense of reality. For a time he maintained correspondence with Aureliano and Gabriel, until one day a letter arrived that Aureliano did not want to read, in which he was informed of his death. From this character is the famous phrase: "Every ancient spring is irretrievable".

The Catalan wise man is a tribute to the writer Ramon Vinyes, an important figure of the Barranquilla intelligentsia, around whom the intellectual activities of the Barranquilla Group revolved, together with the writer José Félix Fuenmayor.

Alvaro, Alfonso, Gabriel and Germán

Four friends of Aureliano Babilonia whom he meets in the shop of the Catalan wise man. They entertain themselves by discussing literature and going to brothels (the one with the girls who went to bed because of hunger or "El niño de oro", by Pilar Ternera). Of the four, the closest to Aureliano is Gabriel, since he is the great-grandson of Gerineldo Márquez (who had been a friend of Colonel Aureliano Buendía) and for this reason he is the only one who faithfully believes in the stories Aureliano tells of his relative, Colonel Aureliano Buendía and about the massacre of the banana company. When the Catalan wise man advises them to leave Macondo, Álvaro takes a train with no return; Alfonso and Germán inexplicably disappear; while Gabriel stays a while longer in Macondo, being "attended" by Nigromanta and by Mercedes, his girlfriend who worked in the apothecary. Finally, Gabriel wins a ticket to Paris in a contest and Aureliano is left alone.

These characters are a tribute by García Márquez to his friends from the Barranquilla Group: Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, Alfonso Fuenmayor and Germán Vargas. Gabriel is an allusion to himself.

Apollinate Moscote

He arrives in Macondo as corregidor of the government, but is always treated as a decorative authority. He has 7 daughters, one of whom marries Aureliano (Remedios) and another with Pietro Crespi's younger brother. He tries to make Aureliano conservative, who, instead, becomes a fervent liberal.

Other characters

• Visitation and Cataure: Guajiros Indians who work as domestic employees of the Buendia and educate Arcadio, Rebeca and Amaranta. Arcadio always saw Visitation as his mother. They are fleeing from their kingdom (from which Visitation was a princess) to escape the insomnia epidemic that will plague Macondo. Cataure returns to Macondo for the funeral of José Arcadio Buendía.
• Francisco el Hombre: A 200-year-old troubadour species that flees for the first time from Macondo for the insomnia epidemic, returns next to Eréndira and his grandmother, characters from García Márquez's tale.
• Eréndira and his beloved grandmother: They arrive at Macondo with Francisco the man, Eréndira has a meeting with Aureliano Buendía but this one does not manage to lie with her for fear and the grandmother ends up throwing her out at the end of her time. Aureliano spent the whole night thinking of rescuing her and marrying her, but when she saw her again at the Catarino store she had already left.
• Colonel Magnífico Visbal: Friend of the childhood of Colonel Aureliano Buendía with Colonel Gerineldo Márquez, died one night murdered by someone who was never captured and was going to kill Colonel Aureliano Buendía when he lent his catre that night because he was sick. He had a younger brother who was decapitated by one of the sicarios with machete of the banana company when he tried to stop him from stinging his 7-year-old grandson as punishment for spilling his soda.
• Catarino: Dignity of a shop where there are several remarkable scenes like the first time that Arcadio condemns a Macondo resident to die shot.
• Amparo Moscote: One of the seven daughters of the Apolinar Moscote, becomes a friend of Rebeca Buendía and marries Bruno Crespi.
• Alirio Noguera: Revolutionary Terrorist established in Macondo as a false doctor entitled at the University of Leipzig, expert in attacks. He was turning Macondo's youth into liberals and Aureliano began to visit him but he could not convince him after proposing to assassinate Don Apolinar Moscote. When the civil war begins it is killed by the conservatives.
• General Victorio Medina: General mentioned during the first civil war, when Colonel Aureliano Buendía leaves the village with his friends the colonels Magnificent Visbal and Gerineldo Márquez decide to join his troops, the first war ends with his capture and once Roque Carnicero dismisses Colonel Aureliano Buendía, he joins this to liberate the general and initiate a new civil war. He dies shot before Colonel Aureliano Buendía rescues him.
• Colonel Gregorio Stevenson: Liberal sent by Colonel Aureliano Buendía to warn Arcadio that he should surrender Macondo to the conservatives, is imprisoned by Arcadio when he believes it. During the battle in Macondo he is liberated by Arcadio to fight and is the last fighter to be defeated, he drew all his shots. Conservatives are surprised to see him dead.
• Captain Roque Carnicero: Officer who is in charge of shooting Colonel Aureliano Buendía, knowing that in doing so he was to be killed by the residents of Macondo along with his platoon cancels the shooting and joins Colonel Aureliano Buendía.
• Bruno Crespi: Young brother of Pietro Cresi, takes care of his brother's shop after his suicide. He ends up married to Amparo Moscote and opens Macondo's first cinema.
• Father Nicanor Reyna: First priest of Macondo, Ursula Iguarán brings him to marry Aureliano with Remedios and decides to stay when he sees that the inhabitants of Macondo lived in a state of nature. When he talked to the madman Joseph Arcadio Buendía reveals that the language he spoke was Latin and tries to convince him of God's existence through theological rhetoric. He was able to perform the miracle of levitation after drinking a cup of hot chocolate from a sip. It supervises the construction of the first church in Macondo.
• Father Colonel The puppy: Cura that happens to Father Nicanor after his death, was a veteran of the first civil war and is a character of the novel The stake.
• Father Antonio Isabel: Successor of Father Colonel. He raised and trained cocks of fight, activity that teaches José Arcadio Segundo. On the Wednesday of ash in which Amaranta took the seventeen Aurelians to the Mass, Father Antonio Isabel branded them with a cross of ashes imbberable on the forehead that would serve the murderers to identify them. He supported and intervened with the banana company on the first strike where the workers asked not to be forced to work on Sundays.
• Captain Achilles Ricardo: He becomes the civilian and military chief of Macondo during the civil war, kills Aureliano José when he refused to be cacheado for the role of El puñal del zorro (El puñal del godo de José Zorrilla, with the name changed). As soon as he shot Aureliano José, he is killed by two simultaneous bullets at the cry of Long Live the Liberal Party! Long live Colonel Aureliano Buendía! His body is the victim of the shooting of more than four hundred residents of Macondo.
• General Teófilo Vargas: Indigenous general of an innate evil and cunning that ends up unifying all the rebellious command instead of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. He is killed by the same liberals in an implicit order of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, which would begin to lead him to the loneliness of power and glory.
• Carmelita Montiel: He was meant to be Aureliano Joseph's true love of not being for his death.
• Mercedes: Mercedes Barcha, wife of García Márquez. In the novel, Gabriel's silent boticarian girlfriend (Mercedes Barcha's father was a goat). Rodrigo (one of the sons of García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha) is also mentioned as the possible name of the son of Amaranta Úrsula with Aureliano, and Gonzalo (the second son of García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha) as the possible names of the children of Amaranta Úrsula and Gastón.
• Rafael Escalona: Recognized composer of vallenatos, a great personal friend of García Márquez. He is mentioned as "the nephew of the bishop", in allusion that Escalona was the son of a niece of the bishop and poet Rafael Celedón, important character of Santa Marta.
• Lorenzo Gavilán and Artemio Cruz: characters from the novel The Death of Artemio Cruz, by Carlos Fuentes, a great friend of García Márquez.
• Rocamadour: Person of Rayuela, Julio Cortázar. It is the baby of the Wizard; it dies before ending "On the side of there."
• Victor Hugues: Hero of The Century of LightsAlejo Carpentier. French politician who introduced the ideas of the French Revolution in the Caribbean as administrator of the French colonies in that region.
• José Asunción Silva: although indirectly, is present when Colonel Aureliano Buendía asks the doctor to paint the exact place of the heart in his chest, and then try to kill himself by shooting there. The colonel did not accomplish his task, unlike Silva.
• Carlos Cortés Vargas: Colombian general who carried out the Massacre de las Bananeras, a bloody episode that occurred in 1928, a year after the birth of García Márquez in the banana zone of the department of Magdalena.

Genesis of the novel

The writing of the novel required the author 18 months of work at his home in Mexico City, starting in October 1965, but it can also be affirmed that its genesis concluded on June 5, 1967, the date of publication by Editorial South American of Buenos Aires. Some time before beginning the writing of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the chronicler of Latin American literature Luis Harss was preparing a book on the 9 main Latin American writers and shortly after, having barely read a few books of the little known in that So Gabriel García Márquez decided to make his book about 10 writers, including him. At that time, Francisco Porrúa from the Sudamericana publishing house contacted García Márquez with the intention of publishing his books, but the Colombian writer already had them committed and offered him the one he had begun to write. They closed the contract and little by little the chapters were sent from Mexico to the publisher in Argentina.

The novel was a success, the initial print run was 8,000 copies, which were sold in the first 15 days. It was necessary to make another print run of 10,000 copies, which also sold very quickly, so contracts were soon signed for translation into other languages. More than 30 million copies have been sold in the nearly 40 languages into which it has been translated.

Criticism

Since its publication in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been the object of multiple criticisms and interpretations from various cultures to which this work has reached.

In Latin America, the writer and Peruvian Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, who published the book García Márquez: historia de un deicide in 1971 in which he analyzes his work, affirms that One Hundred Years of Solitude is “one of the most important narrative works in our language” and highlights the author’s ambition to create “a vast world, imprisoning so many things and so diverse within the novel space»; In 1972, the Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti described One Hundred Years of Solitude as "an enterprise that in its mere approach seems impossible and yet in its realization it is simply a masterpiece", affirming that Macondo until before this work was an image of Colombia, but after it it became Latin America. For his part, the Chilean writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Pablo Neruda called this work "The Quixote of our time".

One of his main critics in the English edition is the American writer and journalist Norman Mailer, who affirmed that in this book Gabriel García Márquez "created hundreds of worlds and characters in an absolutely amazing work" For his part, in the French edition, the Tunisian novelist Hubert Haddad, who has analyzed the work of García Márquez, classified this novel in the author's memoir genre, since his stories recall the environment where he grew up.

Other well-known characters have given their opinions about One Hundred Years of Solitude. Such is the case of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who affirmed that with this novel he felt a great impact that he had not felt for many years with a literary work, and the former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, who stated that this has been his book. favorite.

Accusation of plagiarism

In 1969, the Venezuelan writer Luis Cova García, in his comparative analysis "Coincidence or plagiarism", published in the Honduran magazine Ariel, claimed to have verified that the story of José Arcadio Buendía, the family patriarch, had been plagiarized by Gabriel García Márquez from The Search for the Absolute, by Honoré de Balzac. In 1971, the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Miguel Ángel Asturias, took Cova's analysis as a basis for not awarding García Márquez the Gran Águila de Oro literary prize from the French city of Nancy, for which he was a jury member. Asturias made the statement to the journalist Ramón Chao, who published it in the Madrid weekly Triunfo, causing an international uproar and opinions mostly against the accusation of plagiarism. In 2002, the writer Fernando Vallejo also endorsed the thesis of plagiarism.

One Hundred Years of Solitude in other languages

In German

In German, it was translated in 1970 under the title Hundert Jahre Einsamkeit by Curt Meyer-Clason, who has an extensive history of works translated from Spanish and Portuguese, among whose authors Jorge Luis stands out Borges, Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo and Rubén Darío.

In Catalan

In Catalan, Cent anys de solitude was translated in 1970 by Avel·lí Artís-Gener, for the Edhasa publishing house, Barcelona.

In Czech

The Czech version, Sto roků samoty, appeared in 1971, translated by Vladimír Medek. There are 6 subsequent reissues.

In Chinese

After several versions that infringed copyright, the first authorized Chinese translation was finally published in 2011, the work of Peking University professor Fan Ye (范晔). The translation work of the novel, whose title is "百年孤独", it took about a year. Publishing company Thinkingdom Media Group Ltd. paid the publishing rights for an initial print run of 300,000 copies and promised to use all legal resources to withdraw pirated versions. In its first six months alone, it sold more than a million copies.

In Danish

In Danish, the novel was translated under the title "Hundrede års ensomhed" by Merete Knudsen

In Slovak

The first Slovak translation with the title Sto rokov samoty is from 1969 and the second from 1973. In 1999 it was translated by Ivan Puškáč, the following editions are from 2004 and 2008. The band Slovak musical Desmod has a song titled Sto rokov samoty (One Hundred Years of Solitude).

In Slovenian

The first translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude in Yugoslavia appeared in Slovene in 1970, under the title Sto let samote.

In Esperanto

The translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude into Esperanto was the work of the Spanish journalist and philologist Fernando de Diego, carried out in 1992 under the title Cent jaroj da soleco. This writer is recognized for his work in translating various works of universal literature into said language, among which it is possible to mention The ingenious hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, Twenty love poems and a desperate song and The Family of Pascual Duarte, among others.

In French

In French, the translation was the work of the philologists Claude and Carmen Durand in 1968, published by Editions du Seuil in Paris, and has had several editions; its title in French is Cent ans de loneliness. The Durand spouses have also translated works by other Latin American authors, such as Isabel Allende.

In Hungarian

The Hungarian version, titled Száz év magány, is a highly praised translation by Vera Székács. It was published with a prologue (which constitutes a brief analysis of the work and its place in Latin American literature) by Katalin Kulin. It was published in 1971, with great success, by the publishing house Magvető ("Sower") in its series Világkönyvtár ("World Library").

English

The translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude into English was carried out by the renowned professor Gregory Rabassa in 1970. García Márquez contacted Rabassa on the recommendation of Julio Cortázar after his translation work for Hopscotch. His work with García Márquez's novel made him famous by receiving praise from the author himself, to the point of affirming on various occasions that he prefers this version to his original.

In this language, the novel under the title One Hundred Years of Solitude, has managed to position itself on the list of best-seller books, attracting the interest of Anglo-Saxon readers and publishers and even observing influences of this work on contemporary writers.

In Italian

One of the first published translations was the Italian one, made by Enrico Cicogna in 1968 and published in May by Casa Editorial Feltrinelli, under the title Cent'anni di solitudine. Cicogna has become the official translator of García Márquez's works into Italian, interpreting and adequately expressing his narratives.

In Japanese

In Japan, the novel was first published by Shinchōsha publishing house (新潮社) in 1972 under the title Hyaku-nen no Kodoku (百年の孤独), translated by Tadashi Tsuzumi (鼓　直). The same publisher republished the work in 1987, 1999, and 2006. Tsuzumi has also translated The Autumn of the Patriarch (族長の秋, Zokuchō no Aki), published in 1983, in addition to other works by Latin American authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Ángel Asturias or Jorge Luis Borges.

In Polish

In Poland the novel was translated in 1974 by the philologist Grażyna Grudzińska and the translator Kalina Wojciechowska, under the title Sto lat samotności. The first edition was published by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy publishing house, but more recent editions (the latest, 20th edition, from May 2007) have been published by Muza SA publishing house. Grażyna Grudzińska is a professor, professor at the University of Warsaw; Kalina Wojciechowska has also translated other important works of Spanish and English literature, such as the books by Miguel de Unamuno and William Faulkner.

In Russian

In Russia the novel was translated in 1970 by Nina Butyrina and Valery Stolbov, under the title Сто Лет Одиночества. In 2014 another translation, by Margarita Bylinkina, was published.

Serbian and Croatian

The Serbo-Croatian translation was published in Belgrade in 1973. The language version was Serbian, as the translator was Serbian. However, the first version was in the Latin alphabet; the second version, in Cyrillic, was published by the same publisher in 1978.

In 2006, a new Croatian translation was published in Zagreb.

In Ukrainian

In Ukraine the novel was translated by Petro Socolovsquii, under the title Сто років самотності, and published in 2004..

In wayuunaiki

The composer of Vallenato music Félix Carrillo Hinojosa translated the work into the Wayuunaiki language, for which a group of native members of the Wayú community, both Colombian and Venezuelan, met. The work, whose title is Poloojikiijuyajünainamuiwawaa, was published by the Iguaraya editorial and has a prologue written by Gabriel García Márquez himself.

Transcendence

The originality of this work is evident in the importance it has had for universal literature. The novel is considered a reference to the so-called Latin American boom and magical realism, and various writers who have been faithful to this same style such as Isabel Allende. After One Hundred Years of Solitude a Macondian school arose that had an impact in countries as far away as India, with the writer Salman Rushdie.

This literary work has inspired other artistic expressions such as music; the songs Roderigo, by the band Seven Mary Three; The Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi, by Owen; Banana Co., by Radiohead; Banana Co, by Belaya Gvardiya; Macondo, by Mexican singer Óscar Chávez; Macondo Express, Il ballo di Aureliano, Remedios, la bella and Cent'anni di solitudine, from the Italian group Modena City Ramblers, are based on the novel.

The play was staged in the play One Hundred Years of Solitude (百年の孤独) by the Japanese group Tenjō Sajiki in 1981 and was later adapted into the film Farewell to the Ark (さらば箱舟) directed by the Japanese Terayama Shūji in 1984. In 2005, Hungarian television made a documentary based on the book One Hundred Years of Solitude (Száz év magány, in Hungarian), under the direction of Peter Gothar, which was filmed in Cartagena de Indias, within the television series called "A Nagy Könyv" (Great Books).

At the initiative of Pedro Sánchez, mayor of the native town of Gabriel García Márquez, Aracataca, in 2006 a popular consultation was held to change the name of the town (which identifies it since 1915) to Macondo, as in the work. After a marked abstention, the initiative was denied since it required 7,500 votes in favor, and only 3,596 voters registered.

During the IV International Congress of the Spanish Language on March 26, 2007 in Cartagena de Indias, a great tribute was paid to Gabriel García Márquez and his work on the 40th anniversary of the publication of One Hundred Years of Soledad. The King of Spain Juan Carlos I, his wife, Queen Sofía, the former President of Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the President of Panama Martín Torrijos, the former President of the United States Bill Clinton and various writers, among many other distinguished guests, who praised the work of García Márquez. In addition, the Royal Spanish Academy, together with the Association of Spanish Language Academies, for considering it "part of the great Hispanic classics of all time" and taking into account the reception that the edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha had received two years earlier, promoted by the academies on the occasion of its IV centenary, that same year they launched a popular commemorative edition with a text revised by Gabriel García Márquez himself and introductory texts to the work of García Márquez by Álvaro Mutis, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Víctor García de la Concha and Claudio Guillén. On March 6, 2013, the first edition was launched of the electronic book to buy and download, which was published by the Leer-e publishing house in Kindle and ePub format. The Bogota International Book Fair, which in each edition has a guest country of honor in its 28th version held between April and May 4, 2015 had Macondo as a special guest, as a tribute to the work of Gabriel García Márquez.

In March 2019, Netflix announced the purchase of the rights to the book for its adaptation into a series on the platform, although both the author and his children had previously refused to allow this work to be transformed for the screens. June 2022, after Netflix's announcement, the first call to action to present the casting was made by the production company Dynamo through a website. In that space it is announced that the auditions will begin very soon and while that happens the applicant must prepare a video. In addition, this scenario will only be available for one month and those interested may or may not have experience in the world of acting.

Pop Culture

The work has become part of Latin American popular culture, often making references to Macondo, the fictional town in which the novel takes place. In 1969, just after the novel was published, the Peruvian composer Daniel Camino Diez Canseco won the Ancón Song Festival (Peru) with the cumbia "Los cien años de Macondo" which is a synthesis of different events of the work and its characters; Also around that time, the Colombian Graciela Arango de Tobón composed "Me voy pa' Macondo", and both songs were popularized by the singer Rodolfo Aicardi with the group "Los hispanos" from Colombia and by various other musicians who produced versions around the world and in other languages.

In several Spanish towns such as Granada, Rota, Salamanca or Ávila theme bars called "Macondo" have been opened.

In the Spanish town of Cáceres there is a street called "Calle de Cien años de solitude", as well as several streets named after various protagonists: "Calle Coronel Aureliano Buendía", & #34;Calle José Arcadio Buendía", "Calle Pilar Ternera", etc.

In the video game World of Warcraft there is a quest given by an undead character called "100 Years of Solitude" referring to that title.

The film Encanto by Walt Disney Studios, is inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez containing some nods to One Hundred Years of Solitude such as the Yellow Butterflies that appear throughout the film

Awards and recognitions

One Hundred Years of Solitude received the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela in 1972 and the Prize for Best Foreign Book (Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger) in France in 1969. Additionally, Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his complete works, in addition to holding the record for the best-selling book originally published in Spanish.

The work was included in the list of the 100 best novels in Spanish of the 20th century by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo prepared in 2001, in the list of the 100 books of the 20th century by the French newspaper Le Monde of 1999 and on the Norwegian Book Club's list of the 100 best books of all time in May 2002.

The first galley proofs of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude with handwritten corrections by Gabriel García Márquez for the first edition of the book were declared an Asset of National Cultural Interest in the Heritage category Immaterial of Colombia through resolution 1109 of July 19, 2001.