One Hundred Years of Solitude

The war between the Conservatives and the Liberals reaches its conclusion, although Colonel Buendía wishes to keep fighting. He sends word to Márquez to pick five men and prepare to leave. The two of them lead guerilla revolts at sporadic intervals.

A new school is built in Macondo, attended by Aureliano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo, and Remedios the Beauty.

Pilar and Aureliano’s son, Aureliano José, and his aunt Amaranta have a physical relationship intermittently throughout his teenage years, sleeping naked in the same bed but never consummating the relationship due to her concerns about incest and the fear of having a child with a pig’s tail. When she rejects him, he goes to sleep in the town military barracks. Later, he goes off to war with the federal troops, but he deserts to return to Macondo and marry her. Aureliano José comes into her room and tries to coerce her into sexual activity, but she rejects him, locking him out of her room permanently.

Women begin bringing Colonel Aureliano Buendía's sons to be baptized in Macondo, one by one. He has 17 children with the first name Aureliano and the last name of their respective mothers. Úrsula records their names and other identifying information in a ledger so the colonel can look for then when he returns if he wishes.

Aureliano José goes out to the theater and is fatally shot when he refuses to comply with soldiers’ search of the audience. The captain who shoots him is killed, and over 400 men come by to shoot his dead body.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía comes back to Macondo, captures it, and places the Conservative government there on trial. Úrsula tries to save the mayor, General Moncada, who is a personal friend of the family. She fails, although the colonel agrees to send his possessions to his widow, and Moncada is executed. 

Colonel Gerineldo Márquez pursues Amaranta. He visits her consistently for several years, even though she continually rejects him.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía appears to lose his grip on the sequence of events that occur in the war and is no longer invested in political decision-making. War seems to bore him. He decides that no one can come closer to him than 10 feet, so his aides draw chalk circles marking that distance wherever he goes. He calls an assembly of the rebel Liberal commanders; an upstart Indigenous general threatens his power.

Upon his return to Macondo, Buendía's ennui continues. When a Liberal group travels to see him to discuss the stalemate of the war, he ignores them for weeks. When he finally sees them, he caves to demands that echo those of the Conservative establishment. Colonel Gerineldo Márquez speaks up in disagreement, and Buendía sends him to prison, where he plans to execute him. But on the dawn of Márquez's execution, Buendía has a change of heart. Instead of executing his friend, Buendía asks him to "help me get this shitty war over with" (170).

In the week before the armistice, Colonel Aureliano Buendía destroys all of his possessions and erases his presence from his family home. He buries his weapons and burns a lifetime's worth of his poetry. He asks his doctor where his heart is, and his doctor draws a circle on his chest with iodine.

On the day of the armistice, the colonel signs all the documents and retires to a tent, where he shoots himself in the chest. However, his doctor lied to him about the location of his heart, so the bullet goes through cleanly, and he lives. He writes angry letters to the president of the country about pensions for former combatants, and he is confined to his room in Úrsula's house.

Since childhood, others have mistaken brothers Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo for the same person. However, when they are children, Aureliano Segundo spends a great deal of time visiting with the ghost of Melquíades in his former workshop, whereas José Arcadio Segundo wants to witness an execution. He professes to be a Conservative and becomes a devotee of both Catholicism and cockfights.

Petra Cotes arrives in Macondo and organizes raffles. She, too, thinks that the brothers are the same person, and she has sex with both of them. All three end up with a sexually transmitted infection; when they recover, only Aureliano Segundo keeps her as his mistress. He is convinced that Petra has a lucky effect on his fields and his farm animals: Animals give birth to twins and triplets because of her presence. When Petra raffles off rabbits, they procreate so rapidly that they no longer fit into the barn.

José Arcadio Segundo wants to set up a boat line to Macondo. He works on the path of the river until it's navigable, but he brings to town only a log raft with French ladies as passengers. They put on a carnival, and Remedios the Beauty is named queen. Aureliano Segundo walks the streets dressed like a tiger and roaring. During the carnival, a golden litter bearing a beautiful woman named Fernanda del Carpio is carried from the swamp into Macondo. Aureliano Segundo seats her next to Remedios the Beauty to share the title of carnival queen.

During the carnival celebrations, someone in the crowd shouts in favor of the Liberal party and Colonel Aureliano Buendía. These shouts incite shots, and many people are killed. The perpetrator of the shooting is not entirely clear, although many denizens of Macondo suspect the culprits are the men who accompanied Fernanda to town. She returns to her hometown, but six months later, Aureliano Segundo marries her.

Úrsula scolds Aureliano Segundo for not being responsible with his extra money, so he papers her entire house in one-peso currency. Úrsula prays for poverty; instead, one of the workers removing the currency from her walls breaks a statue of St. Joseph that turns out to be full of gold coins. Colonel Aureliano Buendía retreats to his workshop and spends most of his time crafting tiny golden fishes for sale. He spends his elder years quietly.