García Márquez—A Numerical Timeline of “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”
March 5, 2023
A “chronicle” is typically defined as a story told in chronological order. If so, then Gabriel García Márquez must have meant something else entirely when he detailed the killing of one of his neighbors in his Nobel Prize winning novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The novel begins and ends with the same murder; Santiago Nasar dies two or three or four times in the story. The story is no chronology—the irony here is brutal, sacrificial, and also matter-of-fact. So, for simplicity’s sake, here is the plot of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, laid out numerically by events. If you’re a student, in particular, breaking down the details this simply can be a big help—even though it won’t really explain an apocalypse.
Figure out where the world went wrong; I suppose everyone’s death is foretold.
This is a true story.
Gabriel García Márquez wrote a novel about it, called Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
This is a linear rendering of the basic plot.
Once, the town of Sucre, Colombia did not exist. The place was occupied by some indigenous, tribes, now long forgotten to most of us.
Then the conquistadors arrived.
Then the “Arabs” arrived.
The conquistadors gave the place their own names and their own rules.
Whatever rules existed for the indigenous, forgotten tribe were transmutated into new, strange, alien rules—conquistador rules.
These rules included legalized slavery.
Even so, the conquistadors taught the tribes at gunpoint all about Jesus and about money and about this thing called “honor.”
Jesus was generally against being well-armed or rich, except in certain cases, like if you were a conquistador. And anyway, what are you going to do about it?
The conquistadors taught the locals about marriage, too. Marriage was only between men and women back then.
Once two people get married, the conquistadors said, the man is the boss.
The people should both be virgins on the wedding night, but especially the woman. If she was not a virgin, then she was not up to snuff and could be returned to her family—like a bad purchase.
So a wedding was sort of like a purchase.
The conquistadors introduced the locals to a bunch of fancy new religious figures— priests, nuns, bishops, cardinals, and even some dude named the Pope, who existed only in the imagination.
If you had a question about virginity, you could ask a priest or a nun or the bishop if you were lucky. Priests and nuns were total experts on virginity.
Conquistadors were experts on money and guns.
The rules around virginity did not necessarily apply to conquistadors because they were so far from home and so lonely and so horny and doing Jesus’ work, anyway. So, yes, many of these poor, lonely, sad men had sex, one way or another.
I don’t want to go into detail.
Any woman they had sex with could not be married, per the rules.
She needed to make a living, and anyway, the conquistadors needed a workaround for these pain in the ass rules.
That’s where brothels came from.
So now, in the town that didn’t used to exist, there were brothels that didn’t used to exist and now a kind of parallel structure existed for so-called virgins and for so-called whores.
Let’s be honest: some of the women lost their virginity, one way or another, before they were married.
Most of the time after that they got married anyway, to somebody, down the road.
But those were the rules: if you pulled that off—if you were a woman who lost her virginity and got married anyway—then you were an outlaw and a badass but nobody knew it except for you.
Fast-forward 500 or so years.
Now, the place is called Colombia.
This town doesn’t have a name, but it looks a lot like another town that does have a name. That town is called Sucre, Colombia.
The people who live in this town that closely resembles Sucre, Colombia are descendants of indigenous folks, but also descendants of conquistadors and Arabs. Pretty much everyone who lives here has a Spanish name, in the language of the conquistadors.
One of these people is Angela Vicario.
Angela has a father, Poncio, named for some reason after the worst guy in The Bible (Pontius Pilate). She has two sisters who are afraid of men. One of her other little sisters died pretty recently in the night.
The family says the little girl died of “nighttime fevers.”
The sisters never go anywhere alone and comb their hair before bed every night. Why?
The brothers are butchers who slaughter pigs for money. It’s transactional, but what are you going to do?
The brothers aren’t bad guys: they give the pigs the names of flowers and won’t look them in the eye when they kill them. They feel regretful about it.
They slaughter the pigs in Angela’s family’s backyard.
Everyone in town thinks that the Vicario Brothers are pretty sweet actually.
Angela’s best friend is Santiago Nasar.
Santiago is a controversial figure in the town. Why?
He’s rich.
He’s Arab.
He’s well-armed.
He’s always hitting on girls—sometimes even on girls who are too young for him.
Their mothers hate him for this.
Still Santiago is friendly and generous. He can keep a secret and he has a nice mother.
As a matter of fact, everyone in this town has a nice mother.
These really, genuinely nice mothers work very hard to keep everyone on the straight and narrow, always following the rules that the conquistadors taught them so that nobody goes to jail or gets killed or goes to hell.
Sometimes the mothers even use tricks to keep their children from getting killed. Good for them, right?
For instance: all of the women in town somehow know how to trick a husband on the wedding night if you’re not really a virgin.
Angela’s sisters know how to do this too, by the way. Why would they know that?
Here’s the plan, if you ever need it.
First, get him drunk.
Then turn out the lights.
Then distract him with all of the sex.
Then pour a little bit of Mercurochrome on the sheet.
Problem solved.
Things click along this way in the town that resembles old Sucre, Colombia for a good long time.
Angela hangs out with her buddy, Santiago, who can keep a secret.
Her brothers kill pigs.
At night, the brothers go to the brothels and party out with Santiago, too, or else they just play cards and drink.
Everyone is happy—including, even, the mothers around town.
Enter Bayardo San Roman, a rich out-of-towner.
He takes one look at Angela Vicario, and determines to marry her.
He brings a big pile of money to the Vicarios and asks for Angela’s hand in marriage.
Angela is pretty skeptical of the whole thing, but she doesn’t have a choice.
She doesn’t really like Bayardo in that way.
Bayardo throws some more money at the problem.
See, there’s this old widower, Xius, who owns the most beautiful house in town.
He doesn’t want to sell because it reminds him of his lost wife.
Bayardo tries to buy it, but Xius says no.
Bayardo tries again. Xius says no.
Finally, Bayardo brings a giant bag of out-of-town money and puts it on the table in front of Xius and leaves the poor widower no choice because it is just such an ungodly sum of money.
Xius sells and then dies of sorrow because he misses his wife.
Bayardo tells Angela, “Look at our new house.”
That’s some conquistador shit right there.
Bayardo and Angela are married in the Vicarios backyard, in the spot where the brothers typically slaughter the pigs.
The brothers have thrown down some quicklime and painted the walls and Angela’s mother has put flowers all around to cover the smell, so it is okay, everyone is able to forget about the dead pigs for a minute and just enjoy the wedding. For one evening, the whole world is in order. Santiago parties with the brothers; the town is at peace; the stars are out; the whores join the party. Everyone is happy, maybe.
Besides, the bishop is coming tomorrow, and so if anybody wants to be blessed, or to ask a question, or to apologize for their behavior tonight, then the bishop will get off of his fancy new steamboat and come into town and bestow a bunch of Jesus’ wisdom and love on everybody.
So tonight is a good night.
Until. . . in the middle of the night. . . there is a knock on the Vicario’s door.
Bayardo stands with Angela. They both look green in the moonlight.
She is not a virgin.
In fact, she hasn’t even tried to lie about it.
Why didn’t she just lie?
When Bayardo leaves, Angela’s mother loses her mind. She beats her within an inch of her life, because the family’s honor is destroyed, she says.
She may also be pissed because all of that money is lost. Who knows?
Eventually, Angela’s brothers Pedro and Pablo step out of the shadows of their conquistador dishonor.
“Tell us who it was, girl,” the twins say.
Angela names her friend, Santiago Nasar. He’s their friend, too.
The brothers grab their slaughterer’s knives and leave.
They walk around with their slaughterer’s knives, telling everybody in town that they are going to kill Santiago Nasar.
They sit down at the milk shop across from Santiago Nasar’s front door.
This is strange, in a way, because Santiago never, ever uses the front door.
They tell the lady at the milk shop that they are going to kill him. They tell six of her customers.
They tell the butcher.
They tell the sheriff, who bumbles around, takes their knives and asks them to go home.
They go home, get new pig-killing knives, come back and sit down again at the milk shop across the street from Santigo Nasar’s front door that he never uses.
They wait.
At some point, somebody slides a note about the killing under Santiago’s front door, but nobody in the house will see it until it is too late.
Word of the killing travels all around town until almost everyone knows about it except for Santiago Nasar and his mother.
Anyway, Santiago is sleeping off a hangover.
And the bishop is coming.
Santiago wakes up late that morning and dresses himself in a white suit to go and visit the bishop and maybe get a blessing or talk to him. He is a good enough guy that he wants a blessing from the bishop.
He goes out the kitchen door, not the front.
Everyone else in town is doing this, too, going out their doors, planning to see the bishop—except for the Vicario brothers, who are waiting at the milk shop to kill Santiago Nasar.
A milk shop reminds me of a mother.
Now, a quick word on the bishop, since everyone is waiting for him:
Some of the mothers say he won’t get off his boat.
“He hates this town,” they say.
So the people try to turn the bishop around on his opinion of the town.
They hold a big party on the dock.
They get a bunch of roosters together for the bishop, because he likes cockscomb soup.
To make cockscomb soup, you chop off the little floppy piece on the rooster’s head and grind it into the soup. That’s the cockscomb.
After anybody chops off the cockscomb for the bishop, they toss the rest of the dead rooster into the river.
Some say cockscomb is an aphrodisiac. An aphrodisiac is for sex.
The bishop is supposed to be celibate (a virgin), but whatever, can’t a guy enjoy those cockscombs just for the taste?
He is also supposed to be poor, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his yacht.
Santiago goes down to the docks to see the bishop.
By now, almost everyone in town knows that Santiago is going to be killed.
Almost everyone he talks to knows. Nobody says a word. Why not?
“Hey, Santiago. What’s up? Anything new?”
A few people, to be fair, are trying to warn him.
By now, Santiago’s best friend, Cristo Bedoya, is running all over town, through the crowds of people who have gathered to see the bishop, trying to warn Santiago that the Vicarios are going to murder him.
If the bishop stopped and got off the boat the way he was supposed to and baptized some babies and blessed some of the people who are dying, then there would be time for Cristo Bedoya and others to warn Santiago and his mother about what’s coming at the milk shop.
But the bishop does not stop.
He just waves from the boat.
So Santiago walks home.
Cristo Bedoya, racing through town, pauses to help a sick person on a litter because the bishop didn’t get off the boat and so now this sick person is just lying there on the river’s edge without a blessing, preparing to die.
Helping a person on a stretcher takes time and good-nature.
Santiago turns the corner to his street.
The Vicario Brothers sit at the milk shop, waiting.
Finally, someone warns him.
The person is an Arab, like Santiago. His name is Nahir Miguel He lives down the street from Santiago. Do all of the Arabs live in the same neighborhood?
Nahir pulls Santiago into his house and tells him that the Vicarios are trying to kill him.
Santiago looks as though he doesn’t understand.
Nahir tells him again: “The Vicarios are planning to kill you.”
Santiago is confused. How can he be confused if he slept with Angela? Or is this just the basic confusion of death?
Nahir tells him that he can stay in this safe house until the Vicarios calm down, or that he needs to take a jaguar gun with him to protect himself from the brothers who want to kill him.
Santiago does not stay, but he does not take the jaguar gun, either. Why not?
He walks out the door with a vacant expression on his face and into the street where the whole town is waiting.
By now, even Santiago’s mother knows that the Vicarios are planning to kill him. Someone has warned her, I can’t remember who.
Santiago stumbles through the crowd. They are laughing and jeering at him.
His mother races through the house to save him. She locks the front door because Santiago only ever comes in the back.
But Santiago is turned around. He’s walking towards the front, by the milk shop.
The brothers come out of the milk shop.
The crowd watches.
The brothers approach Santiago.
The crowd watches some more.
The brothers butcher their friend, Santiago, on his own front doorstep.
He tries to open the door, but his poor mother has locked it.
The Vicario Brothers are not good at killing a person.
They stab him over and over again, trying to stab him in the spot where a pig has its heart, splinters flying everywhere.
They stab him through one hand, against the door.
For a second he looks like a crucified, dejected Jesus.
I’m not sure whether or not the town has stopped jeering yet.
Santiago’s guts are spilling out.
He staggers around the outside of the house, holding his intestines.
He walks with dignity, sweating and dying, but he looks as beautiful as ever.
Across the river, somebody’s Aunt Wenifer is scaling a fish. She shouts to him, “What has happened, Santiago?”
“They’ve killed me, Wene child,” he says. His last words are to somebody’s aunt.
She is the only aunt in the whole book—a book full of mothers. His last words are to her.
Here’s an epilogue.
There is a trial for the brothers.
Santiago’s autopsy is performed by a priest and a medical student in the elementary school because no doctor is available.
The whole town gathers outside. Why?
Priests and medical students are not that good at autopsies.
So Santiago is butchered a second time.
The medical student notes that Santiago’s liver was already failing. He would have died naturally within a year or two, so there’s that.
After this autopsy, the court of law finds the Vicarios innocent—they call it “homicide in legitimate defense of honor.”
That means that the whole town is also innocent, I guess, along with all of the people who shook Santiago’s hand that day and jeered at him and shouted at him and didn’t help him. Nobody is guilty.
Everyone feels guilty, though, especially the Vicarios. One of them wanders into the jungle and is never seen again.
The other marries.
Only Angela is left: she goes into exile in a place called the town of death.
Did she tell the truth?
Did she have a grudge?
Was it consensual?
Or did she simply name Santiago because her brothers would never, ever kill him in a million years because he was their friend and anyway he could keep a secret?
Sometime later, after many, many years, Angela looks down the road of her exile in the town of death and sees Bayardo San Roman riding up the road to ask humbly for her hand in marriage. She has written him love letters for many years. Her parents are gone now. Her brothers are gone now. There is only Angela to ask and so they are married after all.
Why was Santiago confused?