The Literature Book

283

All Aureliano’s victories come to

nothing however, as the country

remains convulsed by conflict, a

parody of the bloody struggles that

wracked Latin America in the 19th

century. The wars bring death and

violence to the previously peaceful

Macondo, and Aureliano’s nephew

Arcadio becomes a dictatorial

governor until he is shot by a firing

squad. The town has been changed

forever, and the opening of a new

railroad exposes Macondo to the

influence of the outside world for

the first time.

At first the villagers are enthralled

by the wonders of modernity—they

cannot understand how an actor

who dies in one movie, can come

back to life to appear in another—but

Macondo soon becomes an outpost

of US economic imperialism. The

American Fruit Company turns the

town into a banana plantation,

controlled by a small encampment

of Americans. When the workers go

on strike for better conditions, they

are massacred in an episode that

forms the violent catalyst of the

town’s final decline. ❯❯

See also: Ficciones 245 ■ Hopscotch 274 –75 ■ Pedro Páramo 287–88 ■ The Death of Artemio Cruz 290 ■ The Time of

the Hero 290 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ The House of the Spirits 334 ■ Love in the Time of Cholera 335 ■ 2666 339

POSTWAR WRITING

Santa Sofía

de la Piedad Arcadio 17 sons

Úrsula

Iguarán

José Arcadio

Buendía

Remedios

Moscote

Colonel

Aureliano

Buendía

Rebeca José Arcadio Pilar Ternera Amaranta

Unknown

cousins

Aureliano

José

Remedios

the Beauty

José Arcadio

Segundo

Aureliano

Segundo

Petra Cotes Fernanda del

Carpio

Gaston

Amaranta

Úrsula

José Meme

Arcadio II

Mauricio

Babilonia

Aureliano III

The same names recur across Aureliano II

the seven generations of the

Buendía family with bewildering

regularity. This family tree depicts

the various relationships of the

Buendías with family members

in yellow boxes and incestuous

couplings shown by yellow lines.

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