One Hundred Years of Solitude

With the train, Aureliano Triste brings electricity and the telephone to Macondo. The lightbulbs allow for nighttime illumination in Macondo for the first time, and the town builds its first cinema.

A stranger, Mr. Herbert, comes to town on the train. He is a salesman of air balloons who is not having success with his sales. Aureliano Segundo brings him to the Buendía house; Mr. Herbert eats several bunches of bananas by himself. He leaves Macondo and brings back Mr. Jack Brown, as well as many other white foreigners, who reroute the river and bring more sex workers into town. They plan to plant banana trees. The influx of new people delights Aureliano Segundo, and he carouses with and invites them into the house at all hours.

Remedios the Beauty sews herself a sack dress and wears it exclusively. Her beauty torments men, although she is unaware of her effect on them. A strange man watches her bathe, falls through the roof, and dies on the bathroom floor. Townspeople begin to gossip that her smell causes death. One day, when she is folding sheets in the garden, she floats up into the sky and is never seen again.

The banana company arrives and brings "dictatorial foreigners" (237), as well as assassins who take over as police. These police kill a grandfather and grandson who are getting a soda, and Colonel Aureliano Buendía vows to have his sons kill them in revenge. However, the assassins hunt down all 17 of the sons, save Aureliano Amador, who runs away into the mountains. Colonel Aureliano Buendía tries to convince Úrsula to tell him where in the yard all the gold coins are buried so that he can start another war. He asks Colonel Gerineldo Márquez to join him, but Márquez refuses.

Úrsula gradually loses her sight and relies on other senses. She memorizes others' routines and brings up the child José Arcadio. As she ages, she realizes that Colonel Aureliano Buendía, who is one of her sons, is incapable of love, and Rebeca is the only truly courageous family member. Úrsula packs the young José Arcadio's things, and the family sends him off to seminary.

Meme (Renata Remedios) learns to play the clavichord at boarding school. Amaranta works on her own death shroud. Aureliano Segundo spends a great deal more time at Petra’s house, where he organizes parties, slaughters animals, and holds eating contests. During one of these contests, he eats so much that he thinks he will die, and he asks to be taken back to Fernanda's house to fulfill his promise of dying there instead of with his “concubine.” Instead, he recovers and spends more time with his family.

When Meme returns home, Aureliano Segundo and Fernanda pretend that they do not live largely separate lives. Like her father, Meme is prone to excess and invites more than 70 schoolmates and teachers to her home on vacation. The students eat and clean their chamber pots in shifts.

José Arcadio Segundo grows close with Colonel Aureliano Buendía and spends a great deal of time chatting with him in the latter's workshop. The Colonel repeatedly fashions tiny gold fishes from the same materials, melting down the finished pieces to begin again each time. He watches a circus when it passes by and then goes to urinate in the courtyard, where he dies standing up. 

Meme finishes her schooling and gives clavichord concerts around town. Satisfied, her mother Fernanda allows her more freedom to spend time outside the home with her friends. Meme is aware of more of the home's goings-on than any of the adults know. Aureliano Segundo spoils Meme and buys her whatever she wants, including all the latest cosmetics and toiletries. At a dance, she befriends the Americans affiliated with the banana company and starts going to all of their parties. Aureliano Segundo buys her a six-volume English encyclopedia.

Death visits Amaranta and tells her that on the day she finishes weaving her own shroud, she will die. On the day she completes it, she tells everyone she will die later that day. Neighbors come from town to give her messages for their own dead loved ones, and a carpenter measures her for a coffin. Úrsula begs her to reconcile with Fernanda, but Amaranta refuses. She dies during one of Meme's clavichord concerts.

Meme begins a romance with Mauricio Babilonia, a mechanic at the banana company whose appearance is always preceded by the presence of yellow butterflies. They meet at the movies and at Pilar’s house, where they have sex. Pilar gives Meme recipes for contraceptives, which do not work. When Fernanda discovers that her daughter meets with Mauricio for sex, she tries to confine her to her room; however, Meme begins meeting Mauricio in the bathroom of the house. Fernanda asks the mayor of Macondo to station a guard in the backyard on the pretext of stolen chickens. The guard shoots Mauricio and paralyzes him for life.

Fernanda takes Meme to the town where she grew up. On the journey, the yellow butterflies follow Meme for a time; they eventually disappear, which tells Meme Mauricio is dead. Without telling Aureliano Segundo, Fernanda delivers Meme to the same boarding school run by nuns where she received her own education. Fernanda writes to José Arcadio, Meme's brother, and tells him she died "of the black vomit" (298).

Meme Buendía gives birth to a son. The nuns name him Aureliano; Meme no longer speaks. Fernanda refuses to let Aureliano leave the house and keeps him hidden.

A year later, civil unrest and protests come to Macondo in the form of demonstrations against the banana company. The leaders of the movement, including José Arcadio Segundo, are incarcerated. Workers try to entrap Mr. Brown from the banana company to sign a list of their demands, but the banana company pretends he is unaffiliated with them.

The factory workers organize a big strike, and military regiments arrive in Macondo. The soldiers begin the work stopped by the strikers, but the workers sabotage it, and many of the foreigners from the banana company leave. Authorities summon the workers to central Macondo to be addressed by a provincial leader who wants to mediate the conflict. José Arcadio Segundo waits in Macondo's town square for the address. He notices machine guns and artillery being set up around town. Workers wait for hours, until an army lieutenant reads aloud a military decree that authorizes the army to shoot to kill. A captain tells the crowd that they must leave the square in five minutes. At the end of five minutes, the army opens fire and massacres all of them. José Arcadio Segundo tries to escape with a child, but the unarmed workers are trapped and slaughtered.

José Arcadio Segundo wakes up on the floor of a cargo train moving to the coast, surrounded by the dead bodies of the workers. He jumps from the train and walks back to Macondo. When he returns, there is no evidence of the massacre. Aureliano Segundo reads a declaration that claims the workers left the station and went home and reduced their demands to two, to which the banana company agreed.

A torrential downpour breaks out in Macondo, and the banana company announces a festival once the rain stops. The military continues searching Macondo for strikers and disappears people at night. Official sources deny any violence. José Arcadio Segundo is the only massacre survivor. The military comes to the Buendía house in search of him, but they do not recognize him, and he escapes certain death. José Arcadio Segundo stays locked up in the room for more than six months, perusing Melquíades’s writing.