Unit II (Novel): Chronicle of a Death Foretold,
by Gabriel García Márquez.
[First Published in Spanish in 1981]
{Translated into English the Next Year}
Latin American author Gabriel won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982. He was the master of a
style known as “magic realism”. He was and remains Latin America’s best-known writer.
The Novel tells the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the Vicario Twins. The novel was
inspired by a real case which generated a stir in Columbia and beyond. Margarita, a newlywed wife,
was escorted back to her parent’s house on 22nd January, 1951 in the small Colombian town of Sucre
when her husband Miguel Reyes Palencia learned she wasn’t a virgin on his wedding night.
Palencia, a wealthy family member who owned land, beat his wife and made her reveal who her
lover was. He offered her a knife to kill Cayetano Gentile Chimento after she identified him as a
buddy and drinking companion of his. Victor and Joaquin Chica Salas, the brothers of Margarita,
assassinated Cayetano in the middle of the town square to protect the family’s honour.
In 1994, Palencia filed a case in court, demanding that Gabriel pay him fifty per cent of the profits
earned from the novel as it was based on his life-story. His claims were dismissed by the court in
2011 stating “Mr. Palencia could never have told the story as the writer Gabriel did, and could never
have employed the literary language that was actually used. The work is characterized by its
originality”.
Although the novel is based on actual events, it is fiction. The novel departs from reality in a number
of small details:
Although Margarita and Chimento acknowledged having a relationship, Angela’s assertion
that Santiago is her lover is never proven to be genuine.
In reality, Margarita remains to live alone while Palencia re-married but in the novel,
Bayardo returned to Angela.
Although the actual murderers were not twins, the Vicario brothers in the novel are.
In a small town on the northern coast of Colombia, on the morning after the biggest wedding the
town has ever seen, Santiago Nasar, a local man is brutally murdered outside his own front door.
The culprits are Pablo and Pedro Vicario, twins and older brothers to the bride, Angela Vicario. Just
hours before the murder, Angela was returned to her parents by her husband, the dashing Bayardo
San Román, when he discovered she wasn’t a virgin. Pablo and Pedro intimidate Angela into giving
them the name of the man who deflowered her. She, perhaps on an impulse or perhaps sincerely,
tells them it was Santiago Nasar. To defend their sister’s honor and the honor of the family, the
twins resolve to kill him. They go about town announcing their intentions to all who will listen, such
that Santiago is one of the last people to learn that his life is in danger. Some of the townspeople try
to prevent the murder but fail, others are too frightened to do so, and still others want Santiago dead.
Most people simply don’t take the threat seriously, until it is too late.
The murder is now decades into the past. The Narrator, an old friend of Santiago’s and a distant
relative of the Vicario family, has returned to the town to make sense of it all. He collects the
testimonials of eyewitnesses and other townsfolk, in the hope of recreating a clear picture of the
events that led up to the mysterious and apparently senseless murder. The chronicle (story) he
presents does not, in fact, unfold in chronological order. Instead, the Narrator leaps between the
events of the murder, the events that led up to it, and the years that followed.
The Narrator begins by describing Santiago’s last few hours alive. He awakes early on the morning
of his murder because the Bishop is visiting the town, and Santiago, along with many of the
townspeople, want to receive him. He is obviously unaware to the danger he is in. Though he
encounters a number of people, including his cook and her daughter, who have heard the Vicario
twins are out to kill him, none of them warns him. The Bishop passes by on the river without
stopping. As Santiago makes his way home, the Vicario twins pursue him and stab him to death at
his front door.
However, before he explains the murder in detail, the Narrator recounts how Angela and Bayardo
met and came to be married. Bayardo is an outsider to the community; he appears out of nowhere
one day, delivered on a boat travelling upriver. He is dashing, charming, and extremely noticeable
with his money, of which he clearly has a lot. One day he spies Angela Vicario, a young woman
from a poor, extremely conservative family, and immediately announces his intentions to marry her.
After some worry, the Vicario family accepts his proposal. They accept more or less on behalf of
Angela, who has no say in the matter and does not love Bayardo. Little does her family know that,
despite her strict, Catholic upbringing, Angela is not a virgin.
The wedding day comes, Bayardo has funded the whole thing. The entire town descends into the
most unmelodious party anyone has ever seen. Santiago and the Narrator both attend. As the party
blazes on into the night, Bayardo takes Angela off to their new house, where he discovers she is not
a virgin. Enraged, he returns her to her parents in the early hours of the morning. Angela’s
mother, Purísima del Carmen, beats her savagely, and calls her brothers, who are still out partying,
back to the house. They interrogate her, and she tells them that Santiago Nasar took her virginity.
Pedro and Pablo Vicario resolve to kill Santiago in order to defend the honor of their family. They
take the two best knives from their pigsty and bring them to the local meat market, where they
proceed to sharpen them in full view of all the butchers setting up shop. They announce to everyone
that they are going to kill Santiago. However, the butchers mostly ignore them, thinking them drunk.
From the meat market the twins go to Clotilde Armenta’s milkshop to keep watch over Santiago’s
house, which is across the street. They announce their intentions to everyone in the shop, including
Clotilde. Almost no one takes them seriously, but when Colonel Lázaro Aponte hears of their plan
he confiscates their knives. The twins simply retrieve new knives and return to Clotilde’s store.
They wait for a light to come on in Santiago’s room, but this never happens. The Narrator explains
that Santiago returned home and fell asleep without turning on the light.
The Narrator leaps ahead to the days following Santiago’s murder. He explains in detail the autopsy
haphazardly performed on Santiago’s body. He recounts how the Vicario twins were arrested and
awaited trial for three years, unable to afford bail, before finally being found innocent based on the
“thesis of homicide (the killing of one human being by another) in legitimate defense of honor”.
The Vicario family left town, while Bayardo was dragged off by his family in a drunken, half-dead
unconsciousness. The Narrator lingers longest on Angela Vicario. He explains that, after Bayardo
rejected her, she found herself falling deeply and mysteriously in love with him. For years, living
her life as a seamstress (a woman whose job is sewing), she wrote to him nearly every day. Her
letters went unanswered until, finally, Bayardo, old and fat, showed up at her doorstep.
The Narrator completes his story with a full description of the murder. He explains his belief that
Santiago had nothing to do with Angela, despite her insistence that he took her virginity. After
watching the Bishop pass, Santiago runs into his friend Cristo Bedoya, with whom he chats for a
while. The two part ways and a friend informs Cristo Bedoya of the threats being made against
Santiago’s life. Cristo runs off in search of Santiago but cannot find him. The Narrator explains that
Santiago has ducked into his fiancée Flora Miguel’s house. There, Flora’s father Nahir explains to
Santiago the danger he is in. Santiago runs into the main square, where a crowd has gathered.
Confused, Santiago runs in circles until finding his way to the front door, pursued by the Vicario
twins. Santiago’s mother, Plácida Linero, thinks her son is already inside the house, so she locks the
door. The Vicario twins trap Santiago at the locked door and stab him multiple times before running
off. Santiago stumbles through the neighbor’s house to get to his back door, walks into his kitchen,
and falls dead on the floor.
