English Translation Booklet

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PREFACE
Teaching literature has always been my passion. I fully enjoy reading

books with my students, discussing different issues related to cultural and
social settings, looking at the style used by the author when writing the book,
examining the characters, and of course analyzing different themes.
Novels and films are great for discussions, however, unless one is
recording the lesson, it is hard for students to remember key points. On the
other hand, if they listen and write notes at the same time (unless they have
command of the second language) they can get lost, miss relevant information
and therefore lesson time becomes less effective.
For several years, different students have asked me if I could produce
some sort of recordings to help them with their review about what I have
explained in lessons. I attended a CPD regarding using technology to support
teaching and learning and after some reflection, I decided I was going to
start a podcast about one of the books that I teach; "A Chronicle of a Death
Foretold." I am a journalist, so doing the recordings were going to be
enjoyable for me.
When sharing the idea with different colleagues, they suggested that I
should make a transcript available to benefit students, so I have organized
them in this eBook. This series of 17 episodes is available for free on my
YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@linguamigos.
In addition to supporting students, this resource will also help colleagues
to deepen their understanding of the novel, especially if they are teaching
the book for the first time. I hope you find these resources useful.
CONTENTS
Hello!
Welcome to the series on “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” a novel

by the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
To understand the book well, you have to start by knowing its

author. Therefore, today we will talk about the life of García
Márquez, one of the most important creators of magical realism,
the inventor of the fictional town called Macondo and the
possessor of a dazzling pen, which tells legends capable of
making us travel in time.
Reading García Márquez is really exciting. His stories, in addition

to making us dream, make us laugh big, knowing the occurrences
of his exotic characters, who have been beautifully constructed to
delight the reader.
Gabriel García Márquez, also known in the world of literature with

the pseudonym GABO, was born in the Colombian Caribbean in
1927. He was born in the picturesque town of
Aracataca. In his works you can breathe a Caribbean atmosphere,

where the imagination is lost in infinity.
Aracataca, his hometown, is truly an idyllic place, as it is located not

only near the Caribbean, but also near the majestic and enigmatic
mountains of the Andes. And it is there, precisely, where GABO
immerses himself in the field of letters.
García Márquez was the son of a telegrapher. That profession as such

does not exist today. A telegrapher was a person who was in charge of
transmitting texts through telegraph devices, he was also dedicated to
installing these devices and maintaining them, and he worked in the
TELECOM office. This telegrapher, father of GABO, whose name was
Gabriel Eligio García, later became a pharmacist.
GABO's mother was a housewife and her name was Luisa Santiaga
Márquez. Yes, Luisa Santiaga, precisely like the narrator's mother in
the novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”
As a curious fact, some of the family's names appear in their novels.
García Márquez's grandparents were decisive in the author's literary

life. GABO was the grandson of a colonel of the national army, named
Nicolás Márquez, who experienced violence first-hand, since he fought
in the Thousand Days War that began in 1899 and ended in 1902.
This war left the Colombian economy completely devastated. The

country's infrastructure was completely destroyed.
There were between 80,000 and 100,000 deaths, in a population that
did not reach 4 million inhabitants. That is to say, many innocent people
lost their lives. The war between liberals and conservatives had
disastrous consequences for the country, since the following year, in
1903, Panama, which belonged to Colombia, became independent.
Well, a key book in GABO's grandparents' house was the

dictionary. His grandfather loved to consult the dictionary of the
Spanish Language, and in this way, one could say that he sowed
seeds of fertile expressions in little GABO, which flourished in
his various works and bore abundant fruit to the point of winning
many awards. literary achievements, including the greatest of
all, the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, with his
masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
His grandmother was Spanish, more specifically she was

Galician. Her name was Tranquilina Iguarán and according to
GABO, she had an overflowing imagination. With his grandmother,
GABO learned to live in a delusional world, where superstition
and fiction occupied a privileged place, as she perfectly combined
everyday reality with the universe of fantasy. In her stories,
Grandma treated the extraordinary as if it were something
perfectly natural and accurate, without paying much attention to
how improbable her stories were. Knowing this information, one
is not at all surprised by the use of magical realism in his novels.
García Márquez had his first contacts with the world of literature
at school, where he began to write poetry and short stories such
as stories. He later became a journalist and worked for several
important newspapers such as Universal in the city of Cartagena,
Heraldo in Barranquilla and El Espectador in the city of Bogotá,
the Colombian capital.
GABO had journalism in his veins, although he did not study this
career as such at university. García Márquez began studying
law in Bogotá, but had to interrupt his studies as a result of “El
Bogotazo” which was a series of riots that occurred in the
Colombian capital as a result of the assassination of Jorge
Eliécer Gaitán, who was a very charismatic political leader of the
Party. Liberal who was emerging as the future president of the
republic. This occurred on April 9, 1948 and the wave of protests
Violent violence spread to other cities and regions of the country for
around ten years. This violent period is known as “the era of violence”
in Colombia.
The assassination of Gaitán is of great significance in Colombian

history, since Gaitán firmly denounced the labor abuses of the
American banana company that generated United fruit Company
the massacre of the banana plantations.
GABO's journalistic influence is evident in his works, in fact,

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” is just that, a journalistic chronicle, in
which the reader finds a fairly descriptive text, where the narrator
tries to put the broken mirror back together. of memory, to establish
the details of the death of his best friend: Santiago Nasar.
But, the tropical Caribbean coast where Gabo is from is also a place
that welcomed many Arab and Afro-descendant immigrants. These
groups mixed with the native Arawaks and Spanish immigrants,
giving rise to a mixture, with common cultural elements such as
honor, machismo and love for religious themes.
As Santiago Nasar expressed it well in the novel “Chronicle of a

Death Foretold,” for them, the fausts of the church caused a special
fascination, and it was like going to the movies. Without a doubt, a
very exciting activity at that time, for the inhabitants of a small village.
In the fifties, the time in which the novel takes place, home life
predominated in the collective mentality of the Colombian Caribbean.
The woman was responsible for transmitting the values of the female
sex to her daughters, as Pura Vicario does in “Chronicle of a Death
Foretold.” On the other hand, for men there were few restrictions. For
this reason, the father wanted his sons to behave like all 'males' and
they were guided so that they
They fulfilled their role as providers of the family, defenders of honor and
protectors of women, who were seen as weak and defenseless beings, and
sometimes, why not say it? as a being inferior to man.
GABO married the love of his life; Mercedes Barcha. He proposed to her
when she was just a child, as mentioned anecdotally in the novel. Two
children were born from that union.
The filmmaker Rodrigo García Barcha and the graphic designer and painter
Gonzalo García Barcha.
Something that few people know is that GABO had another daughter, but
not with Mercedes Barcha but with the Mexican journalist and writer Susana
Cato. This daughter is considered GABO's secret daughter because she
was born out of wedlock with Mercedes. The girl's name is Indira Cato and
her existence was known until recently.
During his 87 years of life, García Márquez experienced a universal culture.

Among other places, he lived in Paris, Barcelona, Caracas and Mexico
City, where he died in 2014. His remains rest in Colombia, in the beautiful
colonial city of Cartagena de Indias, in the Cloister of Merced.
García Márquez is one of the most important writers of the Spanish

language. His death was a great loss for the world of literature. To honor
GABO's memory after his death, the Colombian government declared three
days of national mourning.
Also, the Colombian government pointed out that the writer was, “the
Colombian who, in the entire history of the country, has carried the name
of the country the furthest and highest” and three days of national mourning
were declared for his death. In addition, all Colombian flags were flown at
half-mast.
Well, this is a fairly short summary of the life of Gabriel García Márquez.
Next week we will continue with a
synopsis of the novel. A summary of “Chronicle of a Death of a

Death Foretold.”
So, from the unique town of Aracataca and the dictionary that
GABO consulted in his childhood, from the violence reported by his
grandfather Nicolás, from the fantastic stories of his grandmother
Tranquilina, from his work as a journalist, and from the mix of
cultures that developed common elements in the Colombian
Caribbean, in the narration of this story Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to you.
I wish all listeners a happy week.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” the

novel by the famous writer Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian
Nobel Prize winner in literature.
Last time we talked about the protagonist of magical realism, his love
for the dictionary, the violence that his grandfather Nicolás experienced
during the Thousand Days War and the fantastic stories of his
grandmother Tranquilina, where fiction was confused with reality .
Today we will summarize the work, and then, in the following

programs, we will delve into the cultural and social environment of
the novel. We will examine the literary style, analyze the most
important themes that the book addresses, and of course,
We will talk about the characters who star in this beautiful love
story that is both tragic and quite moving.
The novel is divided into five fairly well-defined chapters, where

precise events and specific situations appear, which are
interspersed with events from the past, and which are told by a
fantastic narrator, whose name we do not know.
The fact that the novel is not written in chronological order

allows the reader to piece together the puzzle of the story and
draw their own conclusions about what is happening as they
read and explore each page.
In chapter one, García Márquez tells us from the first line that
Santiago Nasar is going to be killed. He introduces us to the
Nasar family, which consists of Ibrahim Nasar; a man of Arab
descent who married Plácida Linero out of convenience and
from that union his only son, Santiago Nasar, was born.
The reader learns that Ibrahim Nasar is dead and that is why
his son Santiago, who is only twenty-one years old, is in charge
of managing the family businesses, among which is the cattle
ranch called El Divino Rostro.
A very important event that occurs in the first chapter is the

arrival of the bishop. This character, quite distant from the
parishioners, makes a quick visit to the town, where the majority
of the inhabitants await him with gifts and a lot of religious fervor.
The people, in addition to gifts to welcome him, had brought
the sick to the port so that they could receive God's medicine.
Unfortunately, the bishop, as Plácida Linero predicted, did not

get off the ship, and only gave a blessing of commitment, and
left the way he came, leaving all the villagers disappointed.
The reader also learns in the first chapter that Santiago Nasar has
attended a wedding party of some friends.
Unfortunately, the bride at the wedding, a girl who answers to the name
of Ángela Vicario, was not a virgin, and the husband, upon discovering
this, returns her to her parents' house, as if she were a broken object.
This tragic news spreads quickly throughout the town.
In chapter two Gabo presents us with the visit of an enigmatic stranger,

his name is Bayardo San Román. He was thirty years old and a very
attractive man, who also comes to town on the weekly boat. This man
has a very specific objective and that is to find someone to marry.
This rare man's dream of finding the perfect wife is quickly fulfilled after
his arrival in town. One afternoon, while taking a nap, he sees Angela
Vicario in the distance and immediately realizes that this is precisely
the woman he was looking for. Bayardo is a very self-confident man,
to the point that he asks the owner of the boarding house where he
stays, when he wakes up, to remind him that he is going to marry
Angela, the girl who has the right name. Indeed, that's how it happened,
Bayardo married Angela and the whirlwind wedding took place six
months after arriving in town.
Bayardo San Román's family was very rich and was made up of
Petronio San Román, an army general who is married to a beautiful
woman named Alberta Simonds. Bayardo also has two teenage sisters.
Bayardo San Román's family was of upper social class. The wedding
was attended not only by the entire town, but also by very important
guests from the capital, who arrived on the Congress ship.
During the second chapter, the reader learns new information

about the details of the crime, to understand the death of Santiago
Nasar.
To the surprise of a modern reader, Bayardo San Román, who

seems to have married his better half, was the man who returned
Angela Vicario to her parents' house because she was not a
virgin. The brothers insistently asked Angela who was responsible
for the offense and she answered: Santiago Nasar.
In chapter three, which is perhaps the most dramatic of the novel.

The burden of defending the family's honor has fallen on the
twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario, as Clotilde Armenta, the owner of
the milk store, clearly expresses.
It is worth noting that both the Nasar family and the San Román
family are quite wealthy, in contrast, the Vicario family is poor.
The Vicario family is made up of the mother, Pura Vicario who

had been a school teacher. There was also Pontius Vicario, the
father, who, according to the narrator, was a poor man's goldsmith
until his sight was gone, so he was blind. In addition to Angela,
there were two older sisters who were already married and
another sister who had recently died, so the family was in
mourning.
Angela Vicario had two twin brothers who were 24 years old and
were butchers. Because they were the men of the house, the
twins had to defend the family's honor, and with two knives they
used to kill pigs, they took on the task of murdering Santiago
Nasar.
When Angela revealed the news that Santiago had been the
author of the dishonor; According to her, the twins went to the store
Clotilde Armenta, and they told everyone that they were going to
kill Santiago Nasar. The news spread quickly throughout the town,
but no one tried to stop the crime, so Santiago Nasar was brutally
murdered, or literally “butchered like a pig” in front of the door of
his own house.
In chapter four, the autopsy is performed on Santiago Nasar's

body and then he is buried. There is a lot of controversy regarding
the autopsy since the town doctor, Dr. Dionisio Iguarán was absent
and the town mayor, Colonel Lázaro Aponte, had no idea how to
do an autopsy, so he assigned that task to the priest of the town.
town, to Father Carmen Amador, so that he would be in charge of
making it, because the father had some knowledge of medicine
since he had studied it in Salamanca.
As for Bayardo San Román, he is completely destroyed and locks

himself up to drink in the house he had bought from Xius's widower.
His mother and sisters dramatically come looking for him in town
and take him away.
At the suggestion of Colonel Lázaro Aponte, the Vicario family

leaves the town to settle in another village called Manaure. The
twins go to prison where they pay a ridiculous sentence of only
three years since the investigating judge considered that the murder
of Santiago Nasar had been in legitimate defense of honor,
although he did not find any evidence that Santiago Nasar had
actually been responsible for the murder. grievance, of having disgraced Angel
Also, in this chapter we know that Angela's father dies.
“From hate to love there is only one step,” goes the popular adage.
One day, Ángela accompanied her mother to an eye exam in the
city of Riohacha and they stopped by the port hotel. While Pura
Vicario drank a glass of water, Angela saw Bayardo again, he was
leaving the hotel. This meeting produced a kind of metamorphosis
in him, since, as a result, he began to write letters and
In fact he did it for seventeen years, that is, for half his life.
Finally, unexpectedly, Bayardo returns to the town to be with her.
He doesn't make any reproaches, he simply tells Angela: Here I
am.
During the last chapter, number five, GABO tells us that the
townspeople were greatly affected by crime, and this topic was
the focus of discussion for many years.
In this chapter more important details appear, such as that on the

day of the crime, Santiago, after having seen the bishop, entered
the house of his girlfriend, Flora Miguel, and there received the
news from Nahir Miguel; Flora's father, that the Vicario twins were
looking for him to kill him.
Dazed and very confused by the news, Santiago tried to return

home safely, a goal he did not achieve. The Vicario twins attacked
him in front of the door of his house and Santiago died torn apart,
as if he were a pig, as the narrator of the novel describes him.
Well, from the arrival of the bishop, from the marriage of

convenience of Ibrahim Nasar and Plácida Linero, from Bayardo
San Román's obsession with finding the perfect woman and from
the torture of the Vicario twins to cleanse the family's honor, in
the narrative Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to you about this episode.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series on “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” the novel

by the famous Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner in literature,
Gabriel García Márquez.
Last time we made a synopsis of the five chapters of the work. We

become familiar with the three families of the protagonists that make
up the love triangle. Santiago Nasar's family, Bayardo San Román's
family and of course Angela Vicario's family.
In today's program we will talk about the cultural and social

environment where the novel takes place. Understanding the culture
of the Colombian Caribbean well is of utmost importance, since it helps us to
understand the behavior of the characters, and allows us to

thoroughly analyze the theme present in the book.
To facilitate this, I have identified ten aspects that are quite relevant
when talking about the social and cultural environment of this
beautiful story.
Point number one - First of all, it is worth clarifying that the story
that GABO tells in “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” is based on a
true story.
The true version occurred in 1951, precisely in the Colombian

Caribbean, where GABO is from. In real life, Miguel Reyes
Palencia, who is represented in the novel by Bayardo San Román,
married Margarita Chicha Salas, who is represented by Angela
Vicario in the novel.
On their wedding night, Miguel Reyes discovered that Margarita

Chica was not a virgin and because of that detail, he returned her
to his house. This had dire consequences for the family, so Miguel's
brothers-in-law called Víctor and Joaquín Chica had to avenge the
shame and tremendous outrage of their sister Margarita.
In turn, Cayetano Gentile was a twenty-one-year-old medical

student, and the son of an immigrant, not Arab but Italian.
Gentile was accused of having been the author of the dishonor, so
he was brutally stabbed by the Chica brothers. So, the details of
the story that GABO tells us in the novel are accurate.
Point number two – The novel is based on an extremely religious,

conservative and Catholic society. We had said that the splendor
of the church caused Santiago Nasar a special fascination and that
he said it was like “going to the movies.” Religion seduces
everyone, including young people.
Furthermore, from the first paragraph García Márquez presents us

with a very important event and that is the arrival of the bishop to
the town. The bishop is the regional head of the Catholic Church
and therefore he is God's representative on earth. Evidence of this
is that the novel says that they had taken the sick to the port to
receive medicine from God, through the bishop.
If we look at the case of Bayardo San Román, he is not far behind

with respect to his participation in religious issues, because in
addition to helping at mass, although it was in Latin, he also took
communion on his knees.
Therefore, knowing the religious environment, one is not surprised

that Angela was returned to her home because she was not a virgin,
since she committed a very big sin, fornication, that is, she had
sexual relations before marriage, and this goes against the Law of
God.
On the other hand, when the twins murdered Santiago Nasar they
went directly to the church, almost as if to offer the crime to God. In
a religious setting, one might interpret this reaction as: “An eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Point number three - The society represented in the novel is a

tremendously sexist society where the roles of both men and women
are clearly established. “Men were raised to be men and women
have been educated to suffer,” says Pura Vicario. Here being a man
means being like Santiago Nasar, who did clearly masculine jobs on
his Divino Rosto farm, also like the twins who were slaughterers, or
like Bayardo San Román who spoke of the need to build a railroad
to improve the infrastructure.
In addition to this, Prudencia Cotes says that she would never have
married Pablo Vicario if he did not fulfill his duties as a man, that is,
if not, Pablo would not kill Santiago Nasar to make himself respected.
Well, she simply doesn't marry him because she doesn't want a
cowardly husband.
So Prudencia does not show any type of feminine solidarity with

Angela. She cares more about the family's honor, which is linked
to machismo. The woman in this case accepts violence because it
is linked to honor and “being macho” requires being respected by
others.
While reading the novel, one learns that men lose their virginity to
prostitutes. We see that Santiago and his friends went to the brothel
of María Alejandrina Cervantes, the woman who destroyed the
virginity of that entire generation, according to the narrator. For
men, having sex before marriage is something that is positively
accepted by society.
Point number four – For the conservative society of the novel,

one of the most important values, as we have already briefly
mentioned, is honor. This means that dishonoring someone is
punishable by death. So Santiago Nasar was killed for “a matter of
honor,” as stated in the summary and this thesis is accepted by the
investigating judge, as useful evidence in favor of the twins.
So, one might ask, why did Bayardo San Román return the love of
his life to his parents' house? The answer is quite simple, because
Angela Vicario was not a virgin and that is why she disgraced
herself, she disgraced her husband, she disgraced her entire family
and, in the process, she disgraced society. That is the reason why
no one did anything to prevent the crime. The death of Santiago
Nasar was a matter of honor, that clear.
Point number five - In the first program we saw how GABO's

grandmother was superstitious and told him stories where fantasy
merged with reality. This element of the supernatural is evident in
the novel. From the first chapter, the
The reader learns that Santiago Nasar always dreamed of trees and tin
airplanes. The trees are significant because they produce the wood from
which coffins are made to bury the dead.
Also when a person dies, the spirit leaves the body and in people's
imagination, it flies like airplanes, towards the sky, rising into the clouds.
The color of the plane that Santiago dreams of is tin, which is a grayish
color, like that of a person's spirit.
But as if this were not enough, Plácida Linero was an accurate interpreter
of other people's dreams, as long as they were told to her while fasting.
So one could say, and if the lady interprets dreams, what does it have to
do with whether people have eaten or not? We clearly see an element of
superstition here.
Point number six – The social and economic position of families. In the
society of the novel, Santiago Nasar represents the agricultural sector,
since he had a livestock farm. That is to say, he is the owner of the land.
Bayardo San Román represents the industry, because 'he spoke about
the need to build a railroad.' In addition, he taught the telegrapher a
formula for repairing batteries. We see with Bayardo the development of
transportation and communications. Furthermore, people heard him
talking about border diseases with a doctor who passed through the
town, so we see an important commitment from Bayardo for the well-
being and health of the people.
The Vicario family and the San Román family have a dominant role in
society. The Nasar family has servants like Victoria Guzmán and Divina
Flor. For his part, Bayardo's father is an army general and that gives him
a lot of political power.
So this big difference between the San Román and Vicario families
makes Angela feel intimidated and even thinks that Bayardo seemed
“too much of a man” for her.
The Vicario family accepts the marriage between Bayardo and Angela
to improve the economic and social position of the entire family. The
Vicario brothers were humble butchers and Pontius Vicario was a blind
man who worked as a goldsmith, but not a goldsmith for the rich but a
goldsmith for the poor.
Point number seven – Let's take a quick look at the institution of

marriage. We know that Santiago Nasar “was the fruit of a marriage of
convenience that did not have a moment of happiness, although he
seemed happy.” We understand then that people married not for love
but for convenience.
This is also the case of Santiago Nasar and Flora Miguel who were
getting married because their parents had organized the engagement.
And they had a peaceful covenant, “without cares of the heart.”
But, it was also the Vicario family that accepted Angela's marriage to
Bayardo, although she mentioned to the family “the inconvenience of
lack of love.”
Marriage is more important than love and is a very relevant commitment

for society, and this society behaves as if it were a global family. In
relation to marriage and love, Pura Vicario said: “Women were raised
to marry” and “love is also learned.”
In this learning, people get married in the church, which demands

having a marriage for life, since the priest tells the couple that he is
marrying them, “until death do you part.” And in this learning, suffering
plays a very important role, since
Women, in addition to being perfect housewives, as they say

Pure Vicario, they are educated to suffer
Point number eight – Violence. The narrator tells us that Santiago Nasar
was butchered like a pig. The death of Santiago Nasar was extremely
violent. Seven of the many injuries were fatal. The twins stabbed Santiago
Nasar brutally, to the point that it was necessary to raise public money to
repair the door of his house.
Let's not forget that the novel is also based on Colombian society in the
1950s. In Colombia this period is known as “the time of violence” and is
between the years 1948 and 1958. During this period there was a bloody
civil war between the two traditional political parties; the liberal and the
conservative. The lack of tolerance among society caused people to
commit many murders and life in general was worthless.
Point number nine – When reading the novel, the reader is surprised by
the level of corruption and inefficiency demonstrated by the authorities.
The lack of competence of the authorities is terrifying.
How is it possible that the highest civil authority of the town, the mayor,
in this case Colonel Lázaro Aponte, does not arrest the twins to prevent
the crime? despite multiple warnings, from several people, about the
twins' plans.
One is shocked to learn that the mayor went to the social club to confirm
a game of dominoes, and obviously when he came out, Santiago's crime
had been completed.
On the other hand, police officer Leandro Pornoy is not far behind in his
incompetence. He has no power or authority, and instead of being
concerned about the safety of the citizens, he acts as if
was a messenger, because he went to Clotilde Armenta's store to buy

breakfast for the mayor.
Furthermore, the town priest, Father Carmen Amador, who should be

concerned about Santiago's life, was more concerned about the arrival
of his boss, the bishop, than about preventing the crime. In the end
his excuse was: “In any case that was not my business but that of the
civil authority.”
This makes us think that the authorities are not really doing their job,
they are mediocre and corrupt. They are more interested in their own
benefit than that of the people.
Finally, the investigating judge had no experience. He had barely

graduated and was sent to investigate a murder that required a lot of
attention. The narrator tells us that the summary was written in a
literary way, like a work of literature and at the end the investigating
judge painted a heart with an arrow, and the summary was also written
with red ink. This suggests that the investigation was not really serious.
Point number ten – The place where the novel takes place and its
inhabitants. I would like to return again to the Caribbean region,
where, as has already been mentioned in the first program, there is
an important mix of cultures; the African American, the Spanish, the
Arab and the native of the Arawaks. Some inhabitants in the novel
speak in Spanish and Arabic as Yamil Shaium, the patriarch of the
Arabs, does with Santiago Nasar. That is to say, they preserve their
roots.
Although the Arab immigrants integrated very well into the Caribbean
culture, we see racist displays against Santiago Nasar. When Santiago
is in the kitchen having a cup of Cerrero coffee and grabs Divina Flor
by the wrist, his mother Victoria Guzmán tells him, “let go of her,
white.” This comment is quite derogatory. Also
When Santiago was running to escape from the twins, someone yelled
at him, “not that way, Turk,” which is also a pejorative expression.
Finally, we must not forget that, in the Caribbean, the climate is

quite hot, and the heat can be very oppressive. In the novel we
realize that the climate changes a lot. One would say that the
weather changes almost according to the mood of the people.
Some say it was raining while others say something else. There is
a lot of confusion regarding the weather.
So, from the religious, conservative Catholic society where machismo

predominates, from the superstitions of Plácida Linero and the
marriages of convenience of Flora Miguel and Angela Vicario where
love is also learned as Pura Vicario preaches, from the society of
reflected violence in the brutal death of Santiago Nasar and from
the hot climate of the Colombian Caribbean, in the narration Isabel
O'Donoghue spoke to them.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the

novel by the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Last week we talked about the most important aspects of the

social and cultural setting of the novel. We said that the novel is
based on a true story and that this story takes place in the
Colombian Caribbean, a region that has a humid tropical climate

and a region that welcomed several groups of immigrants, both
Spanish and Arab.
We also said that the culture of machismo predominates, the

product of a Catholic and very conservative society. Furthermore,
we mention that during the fifties, which is the time in which the
novel takes place, Colombia was going through a violent civil war
between the two traditional parties; the liberal and the conservative.
In today's program we will talk about the literary style of the

novel. And understanding the style that García Márquez used to
write the novel will allow us to better understand the story and
delight us more with his beautiful use of descriptive language,
which he used in his story.
To start talking about the literary style, let's remember that in the
first program we said that García Márquez was a journalist. This
becomes evident in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, as we will see
below.
The title of the novel is like a newspaper headline “Chronicle of

a Death Foretold.” This title captures the reader's attention and
invites them to read the story to find out what has happened.
The title implies that someone is going to die or that someone

has died and also suggests that this death was known to
everyone. So, if we already know that the story is about a death,
then one wonders, why read the book? Well, precisely to know
the details of the matter.
We could say that the reader becomes a researcher, to find out

who died and why?
Upon opening the book and beginning to read the first chapter, in
the first paragraph, the reader immediately realizes that the novel
begins at the end of the story. “The day they were going to kill
him, Santiago Nasar got up at half past five in the morning to wait
for the ship in which the bishop arrived.”
This is the first part of the puzzle, which the reader is invited to
put together. This is the starting point. We already know that the
victim's name is Santiago Nasar and that that day, a very
important religious figure is going to arrive in town.
This is where the suspense begins. Well, but if we already know

that Santiago Nasar is going to be killed, we already know the
result, from the first line, so why continue reading?
Precisely for that, to find out who Santiago is going to kill? or,
who killed him? and to know the reasons why the crime is going
to be committed or the crime was committed.
This all seems very easy, however, the novel is not written in
chronological order. Each chapter offers specific information
about a character or an important event, as we studied in the
second chapter of this series, about the novel.
So the mystery takes over the story, because the novel is

effectively that; a mystery novel, where the reader discovers that
someone who was never identified, put a letter under the door of
Santiago Nasar's house, the victim, where they revealed the
details of his death.
Unfortunately, Santiago did not see that note, Divina Flor did not
see it, nor did his mother Plácida Linero and this may imply that
Santiago Nasar was destined to die, that this was his destiny.
The novel has a narrator-investigator, as in detective novels.

There is a letter that no one knows who wrote, where they reveal
the details to the victim. And one as a reader suffers a lot for
That's because Santiago dies almost without knowing the reasons,

because just a few minutes before being murdered, Nahir Miguel
tells him that the Vicario brothers are going to kill him and Santiago
reacts with great surprise, "as if he were a little bird." “fashionable.”
In other words, he has no idea what is happening. Furthermore, it is
incredible that no one has tried to prevent his death.
When reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the reader delights in

the fantastic stories made possible through famous 'magical realism.'
A literary style where elements of reality are used in an exaggerated
way, to make the story more exciting.
We see several examples of magical realism throughout the novel.

One of the most dazzling appears at the beginning, to explain
Santiago Nasar's prudence in relation to firearms.
Santiago had learned this prudence from his father. García Márquez
tells us that a maid was making the beds and when she shook the
pillowcase, where Ibrahim Nasar kept the firearms, the weapon fell
to the floor, went off, crossed the neighboring house and reached
the church where it destroyed an image of a saint the size of a
human being. This spectacular description of this unfortunate
accident is very beautiful, quite dramatic and exaggerated, but in
real life, something like this could not happen.
These exaggerations create a feeling of admiration and magic in the

reader, as they learn about various events that are presented in an
extravagant way. Another example of magical realism is when the
narrator, in the middle of the investigation, was able to rescue from
an office that had flooded, about 300 sheets of the 500 that the
summary should have had. In real life, if the paper is exposed to
water, it is simply destroyed and all the information is erased, so an
act like this would not be possible.
The most fascinating example of all appears at the end of the novel.
After Santiago Nasar was brutally murdered by the Vicario brothers,
he was able to pick up the entrails in his hands, walk through the
neighboring house, smile at Poncho Lanao's family and yell at
Wenefrida Márquez that they had killed him, all of this happens
before collapsing face-first in the kitchen of his house and dying.
Obviously one realizes as a reader that this description is extremely
exaggerated, but when reading it it fascinates one as a reader. How
good that Santiago was able to walk and die in his own home and
not on the street! This gives a little peace of mind in the midst of
such a heartbreaking situation.
In this scene, García Márquez's sense of humor is evident.

It is a truly dramatic episode, however, the reader encounters
Poncho Lanao's comment, who says that what they could never
forget about Santiago's passage through his house was “the terrible
smell of shit” while Santiago Nasar walked with his guts. outside.
There are dramatic changes in emotions. The author describes
scenes of violence and suddenly presents situations of black humor
like this one, with Poncho Lanao.
But let's not lose sight of the fact that García Márquez was a
journalist and as such the novel includes interviews with the characters.
After several years the narrator wanted to interview Pura Vicario,

but that was not possible, however, he did manage to interview
Angela Vicario, although he did not discover anything new about
Santiago's crime, since Angela continued to insist that Santiago
Nasar had been the author, the one responsible for his misfortune.
Of course, this interview was not in vain, because it gathered useful
details, for example, that Angela Vicario was indeed a more mature
and determined woman. So the profession of journalist allowed him
to include new information in the novel to surprise the reader.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is written using very precise descriptive

language. García Márquez uses cinematographic elements to paint
reality in the reader's mind with words. Evidence of this is the detailed
description of Bayardo San Román's physical appearance, it is a very
precise description. He says that Bayardo “had golden eyes” to refer
to his honey-colored eyes. Furthermore, Bayardo's skin seemed to
have been cooked by saltpeter, meaning his skin was tanned. But it
also mentions that Santiago Nasar was butchered like a pig. The term
butchering or butchering is quite precise and is used to refer to pieces
of meat when they are cut into extremely thin slices.
It is as if GABO wanted to paint in the reader's mind a picture of what

was happening in the novel. The author uses many qualifying
adjectives to describe cultural elements, the characters and the
situations in which they are involved in the drama.
The vocabulary that García Márquez uses in Chronicle of a Death

Foretold is varied and very impressive. GABO uses literary figures
such as metaphor and simile masterfully. Let's look at some examples
with Santiago Nasar:
• Santiago Nasar “was butchered like a pig.” •

Santiago Nasar seemed like “a spirit.” •
Santiago Nasar had the hand like that of “a dead man.”
• Santiago Nasar seemed “a stigmata of the crucified.”
• María Alejandrina Cervantes “was his unhinged passion, his
teacher of tears.”
Also:
• Pedro Vicario “was a pure candle,” says Luis Enrique to make him
to know to the reader that he was angry.
• “It was as if we had killed him again after he was dead.”

Father Carmen Amador says when performing the autopsy on Santiago
Nasar.
• “It was like writing to no one,” says Angela Vicario, referring to the letters
she had sent to Bayardo, because he did not respond.
• The bishop's ship “appeared at the turn of the river, grumbling like a
dragon.”
But not only the descriptions are accurate in this novel.

GABO masterfully uses the ironies of everyday life to tell the story.
Santiago Nasar was killed like a pig because he was accused by Angela
Vicario of having disgraced her. However, the investigating judge did not
find any indication that Santiago Nasar was actually guilty of the offense.
After reading this, the reader is shocked to learn that Santiago Nasar lost
his life for a crime he did not commit. What injustice that such a young man
with a bright future has died, that he has been murdered in such a brutal
way, being innocent!
Furthermore, if we delve into the religious issue, the church says that one
should not kill because it is a sin. However, we see that the twins commit
the crime, which is a sin, and go to church, one would say, to offer the crime
to God, which is unacceptable.
On the other hand, Angela Vicario was returned home because she was
not a virgin, but the men go to the brothel of María Alejandrina Cervantes,
who is a prostitute and why do they go there? Well, to have sexual relations
with her and with the mulatto women. Maria Alexandrina
Cervantes destroyed the virginity of all of the narrator's generation,

according to his own account.
Speaking of the characters, in the novel there is a religious

element as part of the literary style. We see the use of the
surname Vicario which means priest, also the use of the names
Peter and Paul who are the most important apostles of Jesus
Christ in the Christian tradition. Also, Santiago was the name of
another of Jesus' apostles and there is the surname Nasar
referring to Nazareth, the town of Jesus. This gives a religious
connotation to the work, since the Catholic religion is very
important in the society of the novel.
We have learned in the program about the cultural and social

environment, how superstition is a very relevant cultural element
in society. So is predestination. And these elements are used
masterfully to present a captivating story.
The reader learns that Plácida Linero was an accurate interpreter

of other people's dreams, that is, she was not wrong in her
interpretation, that the lady was quite precise, but she only
succeeded as long as they told her those dreams "on an empty
stomach." Well, but if Plácida could interpret dreams, why did
people have to fast? Well, precisely for that, so that the
interpretation was effective.
On the other hand, everything seems to indicate that Santiago

Nasar was predestined to die, since his mother could not interpret
his dreams with birds and trees that are normally associated with
tragic elements.
Furthermore, the investigating judge did not find any indication

that Santiago Nasar “was guilty of the offense,” so one as a
reader could conclude that his destiny was to die at a very young age.
This is added to a brief comment that Father Carmen Amador

makes when performing the autopsy on Santiago's body, saying
that Santiago Nasar had a very large liver, which meant that he
was "going to die" soon.
Finally, let's not forget that the novel has many elements that
occurred in real life, where a woman was returned home because
she was not a virgin and her family murdered the man who was
accused of being the culprit of the offense.
So, from the magical realism that makes Santiago Nasar walk
with his insides out after being brutally murdered like a pig, from
the use of similes to describe how Santiago was killed, from the
inclusion of religion as a relevant element in the style literary of
the novel and from the precise use of qualifying adjectives, in the
narration Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about the literary style of the novel. Of

magical realism that makes us think, dream and laugh out loud, of
descriptive language that paints images with words in the reader's
mind, of the use of similes and cultural elements to build an
excellent argument.
Today we are going to start talking about the characters of the

novel and we start with Angela Vicario, who is the female protagonist.
She, along with Santiago Nasar and Bayardo San Román make
up the love triangle on which the story is based.
Angela Vicario is a beautifully constructed character, she is a

multifaceted woman, she changes a lot throughout the novel and best
of all, she matures with the story. Angela Vicario is really a very
interesting character.
Let's ask ourselves then, what characteristics does Angela Vicario

have that García Márquez has made her such a complete character?
The answer is: Many!
Angela is a submissive person. At the beginning of the novel she

basically does what her family tells her, and follows her parents' orders
to the letter. Evidence of this is that she accepts the marriage of
convenience, with Bayardo San Román.
This marriage has been agreed upon by the family. The narrator tells
us that when they sealed the engagement, Angela “barely dared to
mention the inconvenience of lack of love,” meaning that she expressed
her feelings in a rather timid, almost scared way.
Here we see that Angela represents the woman of the time, who has
been educated to suffer and who has learned from her mother Pura
Vicario, that love is also learned. Well, at that time, when it came to
getting married, it didn't matter if the woman was in love or not, what
mattered was the marriage and that's it. Love would come, and if it
didn't come, nothing would happen, you had to resign yourself, and
that's it. Matter finished.
At a socioeconomic level, Angela Vicario comes from a fairly poor

family, as we have already mentioned in other programs.
His father Pontius Vicar was a goldsmith, and he was not exactly a
goldsmith for the rich but for the poor. His brothers Peter and Paul
were butchers, which is a fairly humble profession.
Due to her social position, the idea of marrying Bayardo San

He doesn't like Román at all, because Bayardo seemed too
man for her. And, one wonders why he thought that? Well, because
Angela is able to realize that they are not from the same social class,
that the differences between the two of them are too great.
Like all women of the time, Angela Vicario performs domestic tasks.
She makes artificial flowers, prays for the dead, shrouds the dead
and visits the sick. She is a perfect woman, as Pura Vicario
expresses it, she has been raised to respond to the strict needs of
society.
We know nothing about his level of education. But what the narrator
does emphasize is Angela, who was the prettiest of the sisters,
although she lacked grace. One could say that she is a stereotype
of the pretty woman, that being beautiful she is not smart. This
means that Angela was like a beautiful trophy that Bayardo could
show off, even if she didn't have much panache.
To reaffirm the idea that she was only beautiful but did not have
agility or much energy, we also learn that she had “a certain helpless
air” and “a poverty of spirit” which are quite negative descriptions
about her personality. But, since she was beautiful, then she was a
jewel woman, a trophy woman to be exhibited by her husband, even
if she could not maintain an interesting conversation with others. At
that time, proving that you were intelligent was simply not a
requirement of the ideal woman.
Angela Vicario is a very naive girl too. She blames Santiago Nasar
for having disgraced her, without having any evidence of it.
Maybe he thought that because he was rich, the brothers weren't
going to touch him. She searched in the darkness for a culprit and
quickly found the name of poor Santiago and without considering
the consequences, she mentioned his name.
In the novel, the investigating judge did not find any evidence that
Santiago Nasar was guilty of the offense. It is only his word that
blames him. In such a way that one could conclude that she was
lying.
Furthermore, she lost her virginity without thinking that Bayardo San
Román was going to realize that she was not a virgin. But, the most
important thing in this case of naivety is seen at the end of the novel
when she hopes that Bayardo San Román, after everything that has
happened, will return to her, even though she knew that Bayardo
was a rather haughty man. quite proud.
On the other hand, Angela Vicario transforms throughout the story

and we find a persistent woman. A woman who, when she saw
Bayardo San Román again, (when he was leaving a hotel in the city
of Riohacha, after a long time), Angela uses this information and
begins to write letters to him, which at first are formal obituaries but
which become loving and creative messages, like when one night
when writing to him, the black ink spilled on the paper, and instead
of changing the page, he wrote on it, “as a token of love, I send you
my tears.” This is a truly moving message.
With the matter of the letters we see that Angela is a very persistent
woman and writes Bayardo almost two thousand letters over 17
years, that is, over half her life. And in the end, he manages to
return to the one who became the love of his life. She is a girl who
achieves her goals.
It seems like a lie, but the reader is even more surprised to read
that when her mother, with great anger, hit her for having dishonored
the family, she suffered and in that confusion of feelings she realized
that such a painful and shameful situation, It was because of
Bayardo, it was because of him and she falls madly in love with him
to enforce the popular saying, which goes, “from hate to love there
is only one step.” There are not many women who
fall in love with her husband after the affront of having returned them
home, but Angela Vicario does it, she is a unique woman.
Twenty-three years after the tragedy, the narrator goes to town to

interview her. He says that Angela Vicario was so mature that it was
difficult to recognize her. So Angela Vicario has matured with the
story, she is no longer an insecure or naive woman, she transforms
into a self-confident woman who knows what she wants and works
hard to get it.
At the end of the novel, Angela makes her own decisions and
becomes the protagonist of her own life. Angela is capable of
criticizing her mother and says of her that, “she is a woman devoted
to the cult of her own defects.” This comment is forceful to define her
mother, we see a critical, analytical Angela who is able to criticize her
mother in a precise way, bluntly and without fear.
And it is these hidden characteristics of her personality that she uses

to rebel against the family, for having arranged a marriage with
Bayardo San Román, the man she had barely seen, and loses her
virginity without anyone suspecting what she has done. , so she is a
very sagacious woman.
In a religious, sexist and conservative society, Angela Vicario loses

her virginity before marriage and that is why she is returned home,
because she is not a virgin. We see that Angela is the silent voice of
the women of that time, and also the voice of the modern woman who
demands equal rights with the male sex. Angela, with this fact shows
that she is against the rigid norms that society imposes.
On the other hand, it takes a lot of courage to lose your virginity when
you live in a religious and extremely conservative society because
you know you have to abide by the rules.
consequences, and those consequences are not pleasant.

Angela Vicario is definitely a very brave woman.
We know that Angela hates haughty men. She says it bluntly, without
hesitation, when she meets Bayardo San Román at the charity bazaar
where she is in charge of singing the winning numbers for the
orthophonic raffle. And he dares to dishonor that haughty man, he
punished him by dishonoring him, which was the highest punishment
at that time. In other words, Angela put Bayardo in his place.
So yes, Angela Vicario behaved as if she were a modern woman, she

lost her virginity to protest the imposition of arranged marriages, of
marriages of convenience. She is not happy with social norms and that
is why she did not want to be blessed by the bishop either. What other
women would have received as a privilege, being married by a bishop,
she finds that idea repugnant. Angela, is definitely a liberal woman
who doesn't like traditions that oppress.
Furthermore, Angela is consistent with what she says and does not
change her mind regarding who is responsible for her disgrace. When
the investigating judge asked her if she knew who the late Santiago
Nasar was, she simply answered: “it was my author.” He would repeat
these words 23 years later to the narrator, when he said: “Cousin,
don't give it any more thought, it was him,” referring to Santiago as the
author of the wrong, the author of the dishonor.
Angela Vicario is the cornerstone, with her the story develops and
Angela matures with the story. She is the cause of the tragedy and is
the backbone of the drama, as we said at the beginning.
Angela Vicario is a definitely multifaceted character, but not without

first mentioning that she is also honest, because in the end, no
She pretended to be a virgin because she thought that Bayardo San Román did
not deserve to be deceived.
So, from Angela Vicario's transformation from being a submissive

and obedient girl, who accepted a marriage of convenience, from
her return to her home for having disgraced her husband, from
the letters she wrote to Bayardo during half her life and from the
new woman who fulfills her mission of returning to her better half
forever, in the narration of this program Isabel O'Donoghue spoke
to you.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the novel by

the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Last week we spoke to Angela Vicario and we said that she was a dazzling
character because she matures with the story.
We mentioned that she seems to be a submissive woman and that the
reader is surprised because she loses her virginity and that is why she is
returned home, as if she were an object, because she was not a virgin. We
also saw that the woman who inexplicably falls in love with that man who
has returned her. Furthermore, she is persistent and very confident, to the
point that at the end of the story she returns to that same man, who becomes
the love of her life.
Today we are going to talk about the victim, Santiago Nasar, who along with
Angela and Bayardo San Román complete the love triangle of the
history.
Santiago Nasar was a young boy, he was only 21 years old and he was of Arab
descent. His father Ibrahim Nasar had arrived, with the last Arab immigrants, to
the Colombian Caribbean coast.
The first generations spoke in Arabic, but the children spoke in Spanish. So the
fact that Santiago Nasar was a foreigner makes him more attractive than the
natives, because he is different, he comes from a family that speaks another
language and has other customs.
But, also the fact of being a foreigner generates distrust in people and jealousy,
because he has something that the natives do not have. For this reason, it is
possible that Santiago Nasar could be seen as a vulnerable boy.
Santiago Nasar is a quite religious person, we have already mentioned it when

we studied the cultural and social environment. He dresses in pontifical white to
see the bishop, and what's more, he wanted to kiss the bishop's ring as a sign of
respect. Also, he contributed several bundles of firewood for the bishop's ship,
and he himself selected the roosters with the most appetizing crests that were the
gifts established to give to the bishop. All this work to please the bishop does not
surprise the reader, since it was known that Santiago Nasar found the splendor
of the church a special fascination, and as he himself said, they were like going to
the movies.
Santiago Nasar comes from a rich family. In his house there were servants like
Victoria Guzmán and Divina Flor. He also owned a cattle ranch called El Divino
Rostro. And having a hacienda means being the owner of the land, meaning that
Santiago Nasar was a landowner.
Santiago also had firearms such as pistols and rifles, and a magnum, which are
normally expensive weapons and are also
You need to get a special permit to carry them. So not everyone

could have them like Santiago Nasar does.
On the other hand, he lived in a large house where the main door
faced the main square and the back door faced the port. Normally in
towns, and in important cities in Latin America, the houses that are
located around the main square are exclusive houses, belonging to
wealthy families, and this is the case of Santiago Nasar's house.
Regarding his education, we know that when his father died he had
to leave high school to take charge of the family farm and business.
At that time, having a secondary education was a fairly important
achievement. Not all people went to school and achieved a secondary
level of education.
Santiago Nasar feels very proud and sure of himself and what he
has. He is the typical man of Colombian society during the time of
the novel. Like all young people, he was competitive and arrogant.
According to him, the magnum he had could cut a horse in half. This
phrase tells us a lot about his personality, he believes in the power of
weapons and comments on it openly.
Of the marriage between Angela and Bayardo he says: “This is how

my marriage will be, they will not live long enough to tell it.” He wants
to simply be the best, the most.
In contrast to this arrogance, we also know that he has a good heart.

García Márquez tells us that Santiago Nasar had an easy heart and
this is evident when the morning before being butchered like a pig,
when he was in the kitchen drinking Cerrero coffee and Victoria
Guzmán was butchering the rabbits and he threw out their entrails. to
the trash, Santiago told her: 'Don't be so barbaric, imagine it was a
human being.'
Santiago Nasar is also a good son because he takes care of his mother
and the family businesses, although due to lack of experience, he did
not do very well with the administration of assets, as the narrator points
out.
Santiago is a very good friend, and has an excellent relationship with

Cristo Bedoya, with the narrator and also with Bayardo and the Vicario
brothers. They are partying, partying friends, they all have a great time
together. Santiago is a very happy boy. He goes to María Alejandrina
Cervantes's brothel and dresses up with the mulattas, he likes partying,
enjoys life and seems to be very euphoric.
Santiago likes the party because he attends the wedding party, and in a
round of serenades that night with his friends, he goes to the house on
the hill to sing to the newlyweds.
Santiago Nasar is also very obedient, he accepts a marriage of

convenience with Flora Miguel without protesting, even if there were no
concerns of the heart in that relationship, he was going to fulfill the
commitment that his parents had established. The love of his life, to his
surprise, had been María Alejandrina Cervantes until Ibrahim Nasar
whipped him out of his bed and locked him in the Divino Rosto until his
infatuation with the woman passed.
The most important thing about Santiago is that he is the victim of the
novel and from the first line we know that he is going to die, but not a
natural death, they are going to kill him as if he were an animal.
The worst of all is that the investigating judge did not find any indication
that Santiago Nasar was guilty of having disgraced Angela Vicario, and
this makes the reader feel really great sympathy for him. Santiago is the
victim of the novel because he is killed, but he is also a victim of the
strict and conservative society of that time.
Like all men at that time, and in the novel, Santiago Nasar was
sexist. Although he was engaged to Flora, Miguel did not waste the
opportunity to court the mulattas from Maria Alejandrina Cervantes'
brothel.
There are other examples that bother the reader a lot and that is
his sexist behavior with Divina Flor to whom he tells that, 'you're in
time to unravel,' as if she were an animal on his ranch. Divina Flor
is only a teenager and when he meets her around the house, he
doesn't respect her and grabs her pussy. He is a really very abusive
boy.
We saw that Angela Vicario is described as a pretty woman, but the

other descriptions were that she had a helpless air and a poverty of
spirit, which are quite negative descriptions. In contrast, Santiago
Nasar is described with precious qualifying adjectives: he was
slender, he had Arab eyelids, he had a good heart, he was beautiful
and had a fortune of his own at the age of twenty-one. That is to
say, he was almost a perfect man.
Santiago Nasar awakens opposite passions, as he dies without

knowing the causes of his death. He is butchered like a pig being
so young and having a whole life ahead of him to enjoy, but he also
intimidates Divina Flor and a modern reader does not like this part
of his behavior at all.
So, from Santiago Nasar's participation in the arrangements for the

bishop's arrival, from his marriage of convenience with Flora Miguel
and machismo with Divina Flor, from his good heart in being a good
friend and taking care of his mother, in the narrative Isabel
O'Donoghue spoke to you about this program.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the novel

Last week we talked about the main victim of the novel: Santiago
Nasar. A beautiful and slender 21-year-old boy who was butchered like
a pig by the Vicario brothers to restore honor to the family.
Today we are going to talk about the other male protagonist who,
together with Angela Vicario and Santiago Nasar, make up the love
triangle of the story.
Like Angela Vicario, Bayardo San Román is a multifaceted

character who changes a lot throughout the novel and also
matures with the story. He is a quite complete character who
makes the reader fall in and out of love with his attitude and way
of behaving.
The first thing we know about Bayardo was that he arrived on the
weekly ship in the month of August. He was a very enigmatic
foreigner, and therefore, not a man to know at first sight.
He dressed very well, with clothes made of natural calf, and his
skin seemed to have been slowly cooked by saltpeter, that is,
beautiful, tanned skin. He had golden eyes, that is, honey-colored,
a very beautiful color. According to Magdalena Oliver, one of the
town's inhabitants, Bayardo San Román “was ready to smear him
in butter and eat him alive,” which means that he was very
handsome, very attractive.
One wonders, if Bayardo is such a complete man, then why did

he come to town? Well, that question was also asked by the
inhabitants. Someone who could not resist the temptation asked
Bayardo the question, to which he responded. who went from
town to town looking for someone to marry. As they say, he went
from store to store looking for a special object.
This man who wants a specific woman and who spares no effort
in going looking for her, from town to town, is the same man who
does not open any of the almost 2,000 letters that Angela Vicario
sent him during her absence, but who took the trouble to Sort them
by dates.
Like Santiago, Bayardo San Román is a quite arrogant and

competitive man. We see that he challenged the best swimmers
in a swimming competition and won. He wants to win and wants
to be admired and accepted by others. Perhaps, for the
Being a foreigner, he wants to impress the townspeople to earn their

respect.
On the other hand, he also wants to show that he is a good provider for
the family. Evidence of this is when he asks Angela Vicario which house
she likes the most in the town and without sparing her efforts, she cruelly
buys the house from Xius's widower to satisfy the wishes of his future
wife.
Since no one knew anything about his origin, to show that he is a

transparent man with the Vicario family, he brings his entire family, when
Pura Vicario asks him to identify himself to know who exactly his
daughter is going to marry.
Angela describes Bayardo as a haughty man. He is cruel and ruthless

as we see when he bought all the raffle tickets and of course won the
orthophonic and sent it home to Angela as a birthday present. We don't
know how he found out Angela's birthday, but he is very well informed.
The narrator tells us that he literally forced Xius's widower to sell him
the house, although he did not want to sell it to him and paid him an
extremely high price, without caring about the feelings of the widower,
who died years later of moral pain, since the house was for he his life.
Bayardo does not think about the feelings of others but his own and
behaves selfishly.
In addition to being ambitious, Bayardo is a quite insistent character.

He says to Xius's widower, how much does the house cost? And when
the widower tells him that the house is not for sale, because it houses
many memories of his wife, he responds, “then sell it to me empty.”
He does the same with speech therapy, “how much does speech therapy
cost?” And he buys all the tickets to make sure that he is going to be the
winner.
Bayardo San Román arranges his marriage with Angela

Vicario's parents, and this is as if he was implicitly saying how
much does Angela cost?
Bayardo has economic power that supports him. He is rich and

has many resources as well as much knowledge. The narrator
tells us that one day he implied that he was a railway engineer
because he talked about the need to build a railway. As we
mentioned in the cultural and social environment episode,
Bayardo represents communications, transportation, industry.
He also went to put a telegram and taught the telegrapher a
formula to repair batteries, this shows that he is generous with
his knowledge, he is not selfish in this case.
Also, he talked about border diseases. He did it with a doctor

who passed through town. In addition to being intelligent, he
was swimming in gold and this means that he can conquer the
world, including the woman he wants and that is what he does,
go from town to town to find the woman of his dreams, the
perfect woman for he.
Bayardo is an extremely self-confident man. Seeing Angela

Vicario for the first time, when he is taking a nap, he asks the
owner of the boarding house to remind him when he wakes up
that he is going to marry her. But, so far, he only knows Angela's
name. He doesn't think that maybe Angela doesn't want to
marry him, or that the family will reject him.
Bayardo thinks that with his money he can not only buy lottery
tickets and win speech therapy, but he can also buy his own
happiness. When the Vicario brothers bring the speaker back
to him, he gallantly receives them very well and with his chivalry
makes them part of his environment, to the point that the twins
returned to the house not only with the speaker but also with
Bayardo himself, who cast a spell to the entire family, with its
charms.
After returning Angela to her home and many years have passed,
Bayardo uses this same self-confidence to return to Angela. Without
asking questions he returns to her and simply says: Here I am.
The best thing about Bayardo San Román is that he knows how to
forgive. Like Angela, he matures with the story and returns to Angela, no
questions asked. He is a true gentleman.
This ideal man, who has extreme characteristics; both positive and
negative, represents the duality between good and evil. Like Santiago, it
awakens mixed feelings in the reader. He had a good heart and an enemy
of lawsuits, but he had the eyes of the devil and without thinking twice,
he returned to his home his wife, his orange girlfriend, the love of his life,
the woman he found after having traveled a lot. from town to town. Yes,
he returned her to her house, for not being a virgin. That's what he did to
Angela!
Here we see the macho element of this character. Bayardo feels

tremendously disappointed. He, who had gone from town to town to look
for the trophy woman, the pure, chaste and perfect woman, marries a
woman who dishonors him. This is truly amazing!
Bayardo returns Angela Vicario to her house without making a fuss and
warmly tells Pura Vicario, “Thank you for everything, mother, you are a
saint.” That is to say, in the midst of the affront, he maintains his
composure and behaves chivalrously with Pura Vicario, he does not treat
her or the family badly. He knows that returning Angela to her home is
enough, it is an affront as great as the one she did to him. They are on
par.
Like Santiago, Bayardo San Román is a quite religious man. He helped

at the mass, although it was in Latin and he not only took communion,
but he did it on his knees to demonstrate
your respect. He has very strong religious values. He lives religion

in a practical way and that is why he returns his wife home,
because she has sinned, she has fornicated and being a virgin
was an essential requirement in that religious and conservative
society. Being a virgin is an essential requirement for marriage
and if the woman does not comply with that requirement she has
to face the consequences, as Angela Vicario had to do.
So, from the specific description of Bayardo San Román's golden

eyes, his insistence on getting everything, even the perfect
woman, his marriage of convenience with Angela Vicario and
Angela's return to her home because she was not a virgin, Isabel
O'Donoghue spoke to them about her insistence to demonstrate
that it is good to provide and all her religiosity.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about a very complete character, a character

that matures with the story. I am referring to Bayardo San Román
who, together with Angela Vicario and Santiago Nasar, form the
perfect love triangle in the novel.
After meeting the protagonists of the story, we are going to continue

with the most important themes of the novel and today we will talk
about honor.
Santiago Nasar was butchered like a pig for honor. This becomes
very clear to the reader when reading the novel. The Vicario twins
They shout: “We killed him, but we are innocent, it was a matter of
honor” and they go to the church, to the altar, after having committed
the horrendous crime. Furthermore, after such a horrible murder, one
discovers that the investigating judge declared that the crime was
carried out in legitimate defense of honor, so there was nothing to do.
Santiago Nasar was killed by Pedro and Pablo Vicario to restore

honor to Angela and the entire family. Matters of honor in that sexist,
Catholic, conservative society are paid for with death.
Religious society establishes strict rules and honor has a very close
relationship with respect. In fact, the word “honor” is defined as the
moral quality that drives a person to act rightly, fulfilling their duty and
in accordance with morality. “Honor” also means respect and good
opinion that one has of the moral qualities and dignity of a person.
Then, Santiago Nasar was accused of having disgraced Angela

Vicario, and that is why he was murdered. So clearly, because he did
not act correctly, he did not respect social morality, which in this case
is Christian morality. Here we are not talking about whether Santiago
Nasar was innocent or not, we are talking about the fact that he was
identified as guilty of a dishonor and has to pay with the highest
penalty; with his life.
Bayardo San Román, the man who went from town to town “looking
for someone to marry,” found Angela Vicario; his better half, but she
dishonored him, violated Christian morality, deceived him and no one
is going to accept that deception and we must abide by the
consequences.
No Catholic husband like Bayardo is, at that time, is going to accept

having a sinful woman as a wife, a woman who
she doesn't respect herself and she doesn't respect him as a husband.
Of course, on the other hand, in some way, Bayardo San Román is a
victim of the honor imposed by religion and society, but we will analyze
this in another program.
Well, let's keep in mind that women's purity has a very precious value
in the society of the novel, and is closely related to machismo. In this
regard, men have very high expectations of women and expect them
to be pure and chaste, so that they can display “the stain of honor,”
the next day after the wedding, in the courtyard of the house. Virginity
is something very precious, something that has a lot of value.
Angela, she lost her virginity before marriage. She betrayed Bayardo
San Román because she committed a sin that was fornication and
had to suffer the affront of being returned to her parents' home. By
losing her virginity she disgraced herself, she lost her honor, she
disgraced her husband, she disgraced her family, she disgraced the
entire town and society. We see that the honor code works as if it were
a vicious circle and produces a domino effect that affects everyone in
the town.
Honor is an essential value for the entire society in the novel.

Not only for men but also for women. A clear example of this is
Prudencia Cotes, Pablo Vicario's girlfriend, who feels dishonored if the
twins do not kill Santiago Nasar, and witheringly expressed that she
not only agreed with the murder, but also added, "I would never “I
would have married him if he did not fulfill his duties as a man.” Here
we see that the twins are victims of honor, they have to commit a crime
to maintain their honor, to keep society quiet.
So, Prudencia Cotes does not want to marry a cowardly man, a faint-
hearted man, because she thinks that people may disrespect her and
her family in the future. people maybe
She can be made fun of, so the woman puts pressure on the man
to defend her honor, at whatever cost.
Also, Clotilde Armenta mentions it, when she alludes to “that

terrible commitment that has fallen on those poor boys.”
Honor is a commitment that must be fulfilled, no matter what, even

if it has to be left for later, due to another issue of honor, “respect
for the bishop.” Because it would be a shame if there was a crime,
precisely on the day the bishop arrived. What was the bishop
going to think of the people? Terrible, we have to pretend that
nothing is happening here and that Santiago is killed after the
bishop has left.
So, honor is not a family issue but a social issue.

Society feels disappointed by the loss of Angela Vicario's virginity,
and whoever has been identified as guilty, then let him pay, and
everyone is happy. It is “a matter of honor.”
We see that when Margot, the narrator's sister, heard the news of
Angela's mistime, she says; “I felt like I was the one who was
going to die.” Margot feels disgraced by Angela Vicario's behavior,
the women feel “other people's shame” and are affected by the
actions of others.
Religious society condemns a person very harshly when he or she

does something that goes against doctrine. It is not allowed to
fornicate, that is, to have sexual relations before marriage, so the
woman is expected to be a virgin, that is what the society of the
novel expects, which is a sexist, Catholic, conservative society, as
we have mentioned many times. .
Therefore, everyone feels ashamed of Angela's sin, it is as if it
were a global fault.
The honor also extends to Flora Miguel, Santiago Nasar's fiancee. Flora,
upon hearing the news, says about Santiago that they would force him
to marry Angela Vicario “to return his honor.” And what happens to her
honor if that happens? If the twins forced Santiago Nasar to marry
Angela, which they could have done, then Flora Miguel was going to be
disappointed, without a fiancé and without a husband. Because? Well,
if Santiago was the author of Angela's dishonor, he in turn has
dishonored his word and therefore has dishonored his commitment to
Flora Miguel.
So, here we see that Santiago Nasar is not the only victim of honor in
the novel. Flora Miguel feels humiliated by the situation that affects her
directly. As a result of Angela's disgrace, their engagement is likely to
be broken off because the twins may force Santiago to marry Angela
and this is something Flora did not count on at all. She didn't have that
in her plans, she also feels disgraced.
Returning to Bayardo San Román, we have learned that he was a

foreigner and wants to build his honor in the town and earn the respect
and trust of all the inhabitants. For this reason, he challenged the best
swimmers to a swimming competition and won, he wants to show that
he is a brave and competitive man, he wants to be admired and
respected.
Furthermore, Bayardo, since he is a man of honor, that is, by word of

mouth, when Pura Vicario asked him to identify himself, he brought his
entire family, in full, because he wants to show that he is a good person,
that his family is honest and honorable. . Bayardo is a man of honor,
who has values, he has nothing to hide, he is a formidable man.
Speaking of Pura Vicario, let us remember that, although her family was
poor, she demanded that Bayardo San Román identify himself, and set
the condition that the wedding take place at her house, according to her
words: “Our daughters get married in our pigsty or they don't get
married.” Although her house was small, she wants to maintain her
honor and that is why the wedding party is celebrated in her small
and poor house.
Pura also sets her conditions, to feel proud as a mother of a family.

He wants to show that the poor are also worthy and that they can
organize important activities, using their
resources.
The poor also have honor, and being poor, the twins, despite being
so young, have to kill their friend, to assert themselves, to be
respected, to return honor to the family, to show others that they are
not it is played, they are respected.
To conclude, honor is so important that the public defender who

defended the twins in prison only presented the argument that the
murder had occurred in legitimate defense of honor, and this argument
was accepted by the investigating judge. So there was nothing to do
there. Honor does not wait and matters of honor are very important in
the society of the novel, of the Colombian Caribbean, and this must
be understood because the society is religious.
So, from the crime of Santiago Nazar that was carried out as a matter
of honor, from Angela Vicario's dishonor to herself, her family and her
husband. Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to you about the disgrace of
society that is defended by Prudencia Cotes and Flora Miguel.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about 'honor' which is one of the most

important themes in the novel. Angela Vicario was returned to her
parents' house because she was not a virgin, meaning she
disgraced her family, her husband and the entire society. Your
brothers; The twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario were forced to kill
their friend Santiago Nasar out of honor, and according to
themselves the murder was “a matter of honor.”
In today's program we are going to analyze the issue of violence.

We had seen in program number two, when we studied the cultural
and social environment, that the novel takes place during the time
of Colombian bipartisan violence, which took place between
the years 1948 and 1950 and which is known precisely as, “the time of
violence.” During this time, in Colombia there was a civil war between
the two traditional parties; the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.
This war was quite bloody, and many innocent people lost their lives, so
life at that time was simply worthless.
Therefore, when one reads the novel, one realizes that there are
tremendously violent acts, which reflect what was happening at that time,
in “the time of violence in Colombia.”
But, let's go back to the novel. From the first line we know that someone
is going to die and that person who is going to die has a name and has
their own surname, too. His name is Santiago, yes, Santiago Nasar, a
21-year-old young man. And how is he going to die? Well, it is not a
natural death, it is not because he is an elderly person or it is not the
product of an accident, he is going to die because they are going to kill him.
A few paragraphs later, also in chapter one, the narrator tells us that
Santiago Nasar “was butchered like a pig.” It was cut into extremely
small pieces, as if it were a piece of meat, which is chopped into very
thin slices. Here we are talking about a brutal murder.
Furthermore, not only was he butchered, but the twins killed him as if he
were a pig, one of those animals that they are used to killing in the
butcher shop. As if it were an animal, they kill it in cold blood with rustic
knives, made by themselves in their own home.
The murder was brutal. The body had numerous wounds everywhere,
seven of them fatal. Which means that Santiago would have died with
just one of those wounds.
When reading the summary description, almost all parts of the human
body are mentioned. “The liver was almost severed by
two deep perforations on the anterior surface. He had four incisions

in his stomach, and one of them was so deep that it went completely
through him, destroying his pancreas. He had six minor perforations
in his transverse colon and multiple wounds in his small intestine.
The wound on his back, at the level of his lumbar vertebra, had
perforated his right kidney.”
“In the chest cavity he had perforations that reached his lungs,” he
had six minor wounds in his left armpit, wounds on his arms, hands,
thigh and palm of his hands, so it looked like “a stigma of the
crucified.”
Santiago Nasar died of hemorrhage from any of the seven wounds.

The man literally bled to death, because he looked like a sieve.
This description is really creepy, one gets goosebumps reading it
and imagining how poor Santiago Nasar turned out.
The worst of all is that no one did anything to prevent or deter the
crime. “There has never been a more foretold death,” the narrator
tells us. This means that people approve of violence, and why do
they approve of it? because she is used to it, because violence is
her daily bread. The murder of Santiago Nasar was so horrendous
that the door of his house had to be repaired with public funds, as
it was left in a deplorable state.
That cruel and merciless murder seems to be repeated when

Father Carmen Amador performs the autopsy on Santiago's body.
He himself says, “it was like killing him twice.” Santiago's face
transformed as if it were that of an enemy and he developed a foul
odor. One as a reader learns that what is associated with his death
is very tragic, even the autopsy.
And just like the rabbits that Victoria Guzmán was dismembering,
with great rage, in the kitchen that morning, the viscera of
Santiago were uprooted, cut up and thrown into the
trash. This is a really dramatic situation, because it is violent and it

is told openly.
But, Chronicle of a Death Foretold not only shows us the violence

with the crime of Santiago Nasar. There is also domestic violence.
This is suffered firsthand by the same Angela Vicario who, upon
being returned home, was beaten by her mother for two hours.
With one hand he held her by the hair and with the other he hit her,
with such rage that Angela thought he was going to kill her.
When the family left the town, Angela Vicario had to leave with her
face covered, so that people would not see the bruises, a result of
the violent beating her mother had inflicted on her.
This domestic violence would also be experienced by Santiago

Nasar himself. We learned that when he fell madly in love with
María Alejandrina Cervantes, his father Ibrahim Nasar whipped
him out of the brothel and locked him in the Divino Rostro. So, in
that society in the novel, parents distributed leashes evenly to both
boys and girls. They were all punished equally.
As for the Nasar family, we have seen that Victoria Guzmán was
Ibrahim Nasar's lover and he “when his love ran out” took her to
his house and made her a maid. Santiago also says that Divina
Flor is already in time to unravel and grabs her pussy when he
meets her in the corners of the house. Here we see two clear
examples of psychological violence.
Furthermore, there is violence against animals. When Santiago

Nasar collapsed face-first in the kitchen of his house, his body
remained there for several hours. As a result of the oppressive heat
of the Colombian Caribbean, the body began to decompose and
the smell of flesh and blood invaded the place. Because of this, the
dogs became agitated, as a result of the smell of the corpse that
Santiago emanated.
Divina Flor told the narrator that since the dogs wanted to eat the
dead man's guts, they locked them in the mangers. Later, Plácida
Linero ordered that they be taken to some secluded place until
after the burial. But according to the story, around noon, no one
knew how, the dogs escaped from where they were and burst into
the house madly.
At this, Plácida Linero lost her temper and said: “These fucking
dogs, let them be killed.” The order was immediately carried out
and the house became silent again.
We see an act of violence against those poor dogs, who were
confused by the smell of their master.
With all this evidence, one could say that society is accustomed to
violence. Although there was never a more announced death, no
one lifted a finger to prevent the crime. On the contrary, everyone
ran towards the square to witness the crime, as if killing someone
in cold blood were a public spectacle.
So, from the violent crime that the Vicario brothers committed with
some rustic knives to kill pigs, from the domestic violence against
Angela Vicario, and from the violence towards animals, in the
narration of this program Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.
See you next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about the issue of violence and we said that
the dramatic description of the death of Santiago Nasar, where
the narrator tells us that he was butchered like a pig, reflects the
period of violence in Colombia. We also said that the novel talks
about the domestic violence that Angela Vicario suffered at the
hands of her mother and also about violence with animals, since
Plácida Linero ordered those damn dogs to be killed, since they
were excited by the dead smell of her love.
In this program we are going to talk about another relevant topic

in the novel. It's about religion.
We have mentioned several times that the novel takes place in a

sexist, conservative and Catholic society. This affects the lives of
the characters and their role in society.
The novel begins with the death of Santiago. We know that one of the
inhabitants of the town named Santiago Nasar is going to die, but we
also immediately learn that on that unfortunate day, the bishop is going
to arrive in town. The bishop is the most important person at a religious
level in the town after the priest, after Father Carmen Amador. The
bishop is the representation of God on earth. Although, this character
does not show any type of closeness with the people, the entire town is
waiting for him with gifts, with roosters with appetizing combs, because
rooster chalk soup was his favorite food.
Furthermore, people pay homage and honor him, as is the case of

Santiago Nasar who dressed in pontifical white, in case he had the
opportunity to kiss his ring. Yes, people do that, kissing the bishop's ring
is a sign of reverence and respect. And of course, not everyone succeeds,
the narrator does not tell us that Santiago is going to kiss the ring, he
tells us that he is going to look for that possibility, so kissing the bishop's
ring is something very exclusive.
People also attribute special powers to the bishop, healing powers, to the
point that the narrator tells us that they took all the sick to the port, “so
that they could receive God's medicine.”
The inhabitants show a lot of affection and respect for the bishop, and
we see that they are not repaid by him. The only thing they receive is a
distant blessing. The bishop blesses the people, making the sign of the
cross with his hand quickly, without enthusiasm, and the narrator tells us
that he immediately leaves, the way he came, because according to
Plácida Linero, he hates that town.
So here one wonders, but is society really religious? Of course the bishop
visits the people, but he is very distant with the people, he does not show
love as one might expect. People feel disappointed by his visit, including
Santiago Nasar who had contributed several loads of firewood himself,
as a gift for the ship, and he himself had chosen the best roosters
with appetizing combs. This man is not a good representative of
God. The bishop does not represent what one might expect from
a religious leader.
On the other hand, the religious take vows of poverty, however,

the bishop's ship, as described by the narrator, was new and quite
comfortable. That luxurious lifestyle is not what one would expect
from a person who must lead a modest life.
Well. Throughout the novel we get to know the characters and we

see that García Márquez has used religious names. We mentioned
this in the program about literary style.
The name of Santiago Nasar, who is the first person who appears
in the novel, has religious connotations. James is one of the twelve
apostles of Jesus and his last name Nasar means Nazareth, which
was the place where the family of Jesus, the leader of Christianity,
was from. Perhaps this is done to make a comparison between
Jesus who died without any fault, and Santiago Nasar who died
without evidence of having committed a crime, without evidence
of having dishonored Angela Vicario.
Santiago has a cattle ranch called El Divino Rosto, also referring

to religion. Normally when we talk about the Divine Face, we refer
to the face of God.
Furthermore, the murderous butchers of Santiago Nasar are called

Pedro and Pablo. Let us remember that Peter was very close to
Jesus, he is very remembered in the Holy Bible, because Jesus
told him; 'you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church',
which is the foundation of the Catholic church. In turn, Paul is one
of the most important apostles, evidence of this is the letters he
wrote to many communities and which appear in the New
Testament, in the Bible.
Peter and Paul are two important apostles in the Catholic religion.
In contrast, in the case of Angela's brothers, they are the ones who
commit the crime, the murderers. This seems ironic and one wonders if
the society in the novel is really religious. The bishop does not show
love for the people and the Vicario twins are bullies, murderers.
Another religious name is María Alejandrina Cervantes. It is ironic that

the owner of the brothel who destroyed the virginity of that entire
generation of the narrator, as he himself tells it, is called like the virgin,
like the mother of Jesus, is called Mary.
When talking about María Alejandrina Cervantes, the owner of the

brothel, the narrator tells us on the day of the wedding between Angela
and Bayardo, the mulatto women in her business could not cope with
serving the clients who had come from the capital. We then see that the
guests, which in this case refers to men, had sexual relations with the
mulatto women, despite the fact that both adultery and fornication are
considered acts of sin by religion.
A fairly relevant religious element that is included in the Ten

Commandments is not to fornicate, that is, not to have sex before
marriage. For this reason, a woman's virginity is a very precious value.
Fornicating is a sin, it goes against the law of God. Therefore, a woman

must remain pure and chaste until marriage. If she does not do so, she
commits a sin, she dishonors herself, she dishonors her husband and
her family. If we have this very clear, we better understand the reason
why Angela Vicario was returned home by Bayardo San Román. We
also understand why society feels disappointed and somehow approves
of Santiago Nasar's crime.
It is this same society that goes to mass and takes communion on its
knees, as Bayardo San Román himself did. We see that the mass does not
It was precisely in Spanish but in Latin, so people little understood

what was being said, but that did not prevent them from taking part
in the celebration. This is the case of Bayardo, who helped at the
mass and the narrator says, “although it was in Latin.” People don't
care if they understand or not what is said in the mass, what matters
to people is participating in it, because it is a way of living religion.
The wedding between Bayardo and Angela is celebrated in the

church, as was expected at that time, and Bayardo wanted the
marriage to be celebrated by the bishop. This was ultimately not
done and although Bayardo seems to be fascinated with the idea,
we see that Angela did not want to be blessed by a man who only
ate the rooster's combs.
Religion is appreciated by adults and young people. In chapter one

we learn that the splendor of the church caused Santiago Nasar a
special fascination. He enjoyed them very much, for him church
activities were like going to the movies.
This comparison is quite telling, since going to the movies at that

time was a cool activity, something cool, fun and unique.
People also go to confession, confess their sins to the priest.

Before the twins were transferred to the Riohacha panopticon, Pura
Vicario wanted her children to confess, although this was not
possible, as the twins argued that they had nothing to repent of,
since the crime had been a matter of honor.
Finally, we see that after committing the horrendous crime, after

having butchered Santiago Nasar like a pig, the twins went to
church. They recognize that they have killed Santiago, they say “we
killed him,” but then they say, “but we are innocent”' and their
justification is that “it was a matter of honor.”
Of course, this part is also expressed in the Bible because the

scripture says; 'Eye by eye, tooth by tooth.'
In other words, Santiago Nasar has fornicated with Angela, he has

dishonored her, so that is a sin and he has to pay for his sin with
death.
When talking about religion, let us not forget to analyze the behavior
of Father Carmen Amado. Apparently, he is more concerned about
the arrival of the bishop, his boss, than about preventing Santiago's
crime. He knows that Santiago's life is in danger, because Clotilde
Armenta has sent him a message directly with the nun who went to
buy the milk. However, Father Carmen Amador forgot to warn
Santiago. And his excuse was quite simple since he said: “Imagine,
that day the bishop arrived.” He only cares about keeping his boss
happy, that is more important than saving a person's life. So, like
Judas the apostle who betrayed Jesus, he washes his hands and
says that this was not his problem but the problem of the mayor who
was the civil authority.
This excuse is pretty mediocre.
So, from the arrival of the bishop who shows us that society is
religious, from the names of some of the characters who are linked
to religion, from the fornication of Angela Vicario, from the attitudes
of Bayardo San Román and Santiago Nasar regarding to the church
and the petty attitude of Father Carmen Amador, in the narration of
this program Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the novel by

the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Last week we talked about religion, the sin committed by Angela Vicario
and the justification of the twins who killed Santiago, but who declared
themselves innocent, as if justifying themselves with the part of the Bible
that says: 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth.
We also saw people's attitude towards religion.
This week we are going to talk about another very important topic in the
novel and that is the role of women.
Pura Vicario's words in the textual quote: "Men were raised to be men.
They had been educated to marry," establishes the role of women in the
novel and also the role of men.
The role of a woman is to marry and to satisfy the needs of the man,
to accept his authority, first the authority of the father and brothers,
and then the authority of the husband. The woman has to obey, she
has no right to protest, that is, she has to be submissive in every
sense of the word.
We see this when Angela Vicario says that she was forced to marry
a man she had barely seen. Angela's opinion does not count,
although she has naively mentioned “the inconvenience of lack of
love,” meaning that she did not love Bayardo San Román, that she
was not in love with him. When this happens, Pura Vicario
immediately clarifies that “love can also be learned.”
Several things emerge from here. The first is that women have to
accept marriages of convenience, arranged marriages, marriages
agreed upon by families.
The narrator tells us that Santiago Nasar himself “was the result of a
marriage of convenience,” who also “did not have a moment of
happiness.” But, that marriage seemed to be carried out very well by
Plácida Linero because Santiago seemed happy.
Following that line, we learn that Flora Miguel's parents agreed with
Santiago Nasar's parents on a marriage of convenience, and
although there were no concerns of the heart, Santiago Nasar and
Flora Miguel were going to fulfill that commitment.
Neither Angela Vicario, nor Flora Miguel, nor Santiago himself have
been asked if they want to marry these couples or not, the parents
simply decided on the commitment and it was carried out as in the
case of Angela and Bayardo or it was going to be carry out as was
the case of Santiago Nasar and Flora Miguel who were going to get
married for Christmas, in December. This of course affects women
more than men, because men have lovers,
They can go to the brothel to have fun, while for women that is
simply impossible.
Marriage is a very important commitment, which is made for life,

but the most relevant element that it should have, which is love, in
this case does not exist since that feeling, love, is not an important
requirement for marriage. marriage.
The commitment of marriage is more important than love itself.

This whole situation is clarified very well by Pura Vicario, when she
says that any man will be happy with his daughters, because they
have been educated to suffer. So, if they marry without love,
women know that suffering is part of being a woman, because they
have been educated to do that, to accept abuse and to deal with
suffering.
The novel takes place in a religious, sexist and conservative

society. An essential requirement is that the woman be a virgin.
The woman has to be pure and chaste, because the religious
sexist society demands it. The woman has to be the reflection of
the Virgin Mary. And, if this requirement is not met there are dire
consequences. Angela Vicario was returned home because she
was not a virgin and after that simply no man was going to marry
her. If the woman is not a virgin, she becomes as if she were a
used object that no one wants to buy. In contrast, the men have
freedom and go to María Alejandrina Cervantes's brothel to have
sex with her and with the mulatto women.
Well, and when talking about María Alejandrina Cervantes, we see

another role of women, that of offering pleasure to men. “María
Alejandrina Cervantes destroyed the virginity of my entire
generation,” says the narrator.
Because of machismo, it is important for men to show that they

are macho, and one way to do it is by having sexual relations with
women of easy life, as prostitutes are called.
in some regions of Colombia. Women are treated as if they were an

object. In this case, an object of pleasure for man.
On the other hand, in the criterion of the perfect woman, which in this
case means being obedient, submissive, who knows how to suffer,
the concept of being a housewife also appears. Pura Vicario says that
her daughters are perfect because they know how to wash, iron, and
in general know how to do household chores, like artificial flowers,
visit the sick, pray for the dead, and write commitment obituaries.
In addition, Pura Vicario's daughters knew how to embroider with a

hoop, machine sew and weave lace, all of this to have a very beautiful
house. Of course, part of being a perfect woman is fulfilling the most
important task of all, and that is taking care of her husband and of
course her children.
Women cannot make any decisions for themselves, and they cannot
go out alone. We see how when Luisa Santiaga leaves home to warn
her comadre Plácida Linero that they are going to kill Santiago, the
narrator's father asks Jaime to accompany her. Although Jaime is just
a boy, he is a man and that is enough for society to respect her,
because she is accompanied by a man.
If we look at women who do not belong to an upper class and who

work as maids, the role is the same, accepting physical and verbal
abuse. Santiago Nasar tells Divina Flor that it is time to unravel and
how she is a servant, who has no known father to defend her, so it will
be good to be an object of Santiago's pleasure.
Here, the vocabulary is very telling. The verb desbravar is not

associated with humans but with animals, generally with horses or
bulls on a ranch.
As for Divina Flor, we know that when Santiago finds her alone, in
the corners of the house, he doesn't waste the opportunity and
gropes her. Divina Flor said that Santiago grabbed her pussy, and
of course, she was a girl and that's why she just didn't like it.
Victoria Guzmán, Divina Flor's mother, was the lover of Ibrahim

Nasar, Santiago's father. The narrator tells us that when his love
ran out, he took her to his house, but not as the lady of the house,
that place was already occupied by Plácida Linero. He took her
into the house as a servant. Victoria Guzmán resented that attitude,
we know this because she said that Santiago Nasar was identical
to her father, “a piece of shit.”
So, from Pura Vicario's comments that love is also learned and
that her daughters were perfect because they had been educated
to suffer, from marriages of convenience that do not have moments
of happiness and from the domestic tasks that perfect women have
to perform in the society of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in the
narration of this program Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Dead Foretold, the

novel by the famous Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez.
Last week we talked about the role of women, which is defined by

Pura Vicario when she tells us that women had been raised to
marry and also that any man would be happy with his daughters,
because they had been raised to suffer.
Today we will talk about another topic that is very important in the
novel; and it is the difference between rich and poor, which is
large and quite well defined.
First of all, the rich have guns, we see this clearly in the Nasar
family. The narrator tells us that Santiago Nasar Santiago “slept
like his father did, with the gun.”
loaded under the pillow,” so it is a family tradition to have firearms.

Additionally, we know that Santiago had a rifle and a magnum.
Also, Nahir Miguel advises Santiago Nasar to go out into the street
carrying his rifle. Firearms are expensive, and you need to have a
special permit to carry them. So, one as a reader learns that both
Nahir Miguel and Santiago Nasar could afford to have firearms
because they were rich families. In contrast, the twins had slaughter
knives, butcher knives, which were rudimentarily made at home.
One of the knives with which Santiago Nasar was killed was so
basic that the investigating judge could not describe it and made a
drawing of it, as stated in the summary.
And weapons represent power, when it comes to a fight, because

the rich will be at an advantage over the poor. Although ironically in
the novel that does not happen, we see that the twins win and with
those rustic, rudimentary, cheap little things, they take the life of
Santiago Nasar.
The rich get what they want because they have power and money.
With the power that money gives, Bayardo San Román forced
Xius's widower to sell him the house. He tells the widower that, if
his house is full of feelings and memories of his late wife Yolanda,
then he should sell it empty and that's it. And the widower answers
wisely, “it is good that young people do not understand the motives
of the heart.” I wouldn't say the young, I would rather say the rich.
The rich do not understand the feelings of the poor.
With the power that money gives him, Bayardo San Román seduces
Angela Vicario's family. He seduces her with the charms that silver
gives and the wedding was quickly approved. And since he is a
religious person, Bayardo wants his wedding to be celebrated by
the bishop himself, the highest regional head of the Catholic
Church, who only celebrates marriages of important people.
On the other hand, to go from town to town looking for someone

perfect to marry, it takes not only time but also money, and
Bayardo does it. He has money to travel, to pay for transportation
and also to pay the rent for a boarding house in the towns
where he goes. As if he wanted to buy an object, he goes from
town to town, or from store to store until he finally finds that
object, and he gets it. That is to say, he uses his money to get
what he wants, no matter what.
The poor are not respected by the rich. Santiago Nasar grabs
Divina Flor's pussy when he found her in the corners of the
house, as we have mentioned in other programs. Furthermore,
Victoria Guzmán was taken as a servant to the Nasar house,
after having been Ibrahim Nasar's lover.
This is a very great humiliation.
And this lack of respect from people who are in higher social or
economic positions also affects police officer Leandro Pornoy,
who has no authority. We don't see him doing any type of
community work with society, we simply see him going to buy a
pound of liver for the mayor's breakfast. Then, the policeman
Leandro Pornoy has to buy food from Colonel Lázaro Aponte,
and this shows us that he has no respect for him. The mayor is
a colonel, which is a high rank and he uses it by asking the
police officer to run errands for him, to do household chores.
The rich are educated. Bayardo San Román helped at mass,

although it was in Latin, and not everyone knew Latin at that
time. Only priests and some people with higher education knew
about it. He also implied that he was a railway engineer,
meaning that he had gone to university.
Furthermore, Santiago's best friend, Cristo Bedoya was a

medical student and Santiago Nasar himself had gone to the
secondary school, although he had abandoned it to take charge of the

El Divino Rostro ranch. We had said in another program that in the 50s,
having a secondary education level was a high level.
Father Carmen Amador also had a high educational level.

Well, he was a priest and for that you needed to study, but he had also
studied medicine in Salamanca, in Spain and studying abroad was very
expensive. Not everyone could have done it.
Nothing is known about the educational level of the Vicario family. The
only information we know is that Pura Vicario had indeed been a school
teacher, and this implies that she knew how to read and write and
therefore one could conclude that she would have taught it to her children.
As far as food was concerned, the bishop only ate the crest of the
roosters and not the rest. In other words, he wasted the food that people
brought him. He didn't appreciate the gifts people gave him. We then
see that the rich like the bishop ignore the foolishness of the poor
because the narrator does not tell us that the bishop donated the rest of
the roosters to others.
The rich are the owners of the property, of the land. They have farms
and big houses and the poor have huts, they have humble houses. We
can explain this very clearly with the family of Santiago Nasar, who is
the owner of one of the best houses in the town, since the front door
faces the main square and the back door faces the port, so we are
talking about a house immensely large.
We have mentioned in another program that at that time normally the

houses of the rich, in the towns, were located like Santiago Nasar's
house, in the main square.
Santiago also had a cattle ranch, meaning that in addition to land he
also had animals, among which were
They find the birds. Bayardo also bought the most beautiful house in the
town to give to his wife and to have a family there, in that beautiful house.
In contrast, the Vicario family's house is small, it has a patio, or rather,

a pigsty where the pigs and chickens live in the same place. And this
place was not that big because in order to have the party there, the
wedding party, the twins had to take the pigs to another place and clean
the pigsty with quicklime so that the place would not smell bad. And
they also had to borrow space from the gardens of neighboring houses
so that there was enough space for all the guests. This shows us that
the Vicario family really lived in a house that was not only quite modest
but also very small.
Santiago's father was a rancher, Bayardo's father was a general in the

national army, that is, they were people with a lot of power and money.
In contrast, the father of the Vicars had been a goldsmith and not for
the rich as we have mentioned in other programs, he had been a
goldsmith for the poor. Which is truly dramatic, because his sight was
gone, that is, he went blind working with gold. And the twins are
butchers, which is a humble trade everywhere.
We mention the authority that Colonel Lázaro Aponte imposes for his
own benefit. But let's remember that there are other rich people who
also have authority and use it. This is done by Bayardo San Román who
imposed the wedding date. Although the Vicario family was still in
mourning, he managed to lighten the wedding and get married when he wanted.
We have mentioned that, in the novel, Bayardo represents industry,

transportation, communications, and infrastructure.
Santiago represents the agricultural sector and is a landowner.
The rich with their power and money simply do what they want.
So, from the difference between Santiago Nasar's firearms and the
rustic knives of the Vicario twins, from Bayardo San Román's
money and his attitude towards Xius's widower to force him to sell
him the house, from the policeman Leandro's lack of authority
Pornoy, in the narration of this program, Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to you.
See you next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a

Last week we talked about the differences between the rich and
the poor. We said the rich had guns and the poor had rudimentary
knives. We also mentioned that the rich are the owners of the land,
big houses and power, while the poor live in small houses, and
perform humble jobs and have no power.
In today's program we are going to talk about a very important

event, in the novel, and it is the wedding between Angela Vicario
and Bayardo San Román.
First of all, we know that the marriage between this couple was
arranged, it was a marriage of convenience, to improve the social
stratum of the Vicario family, and so that Bayardo could show that
he had obtained a trophy woman, a perfect woman.
Angela says she was forced to marry a man she had barely seen. In
that patriarchal, sexist, conservative society, the man was the one
who made the decisions, and if that man was rich like Bayardo is,
there was nothing to do there, things were done as he wanted.
Bayardo bartered with the family, gave him a social and economic
status and received an apparently perfect wife in return.
We see that the wedding date was set directly by Bayardo himself.
It is an event where the ruling class rules, and religious values such
as mourning take a backseat. We know that Angela's sister had died
and the family was grieving, but the wedding went ahead despite
that.
The wedding between Angela and Bayardo San Román is the very
important event. Perhaps it is the most important event that has
ever taken place in the town as far as is known, because Santiago
Nasar says that his marriage will be like this, and that shows that
there had not been a wedding this exclusive before, with so much pomp.
This wedding, as expected, takes place in the Catholic church.

This is to be in accordance with the religious values of both Bayardo
and society, since he took communion on his knees and helped at
mass, “even if it was in Latin.” It is a typical wedding of conservative
society. Angela dresses in white as if she were pure, as if she were
chaste, as if she were a perfect bride, as if she were a virgin, which
is what society expects.
In this expensive and elegant wedding, everyone participates. The

poor participated playing music with papayera bands, that is, bands
of local music and ate roast meat, they also drank rum.
While the elegant guests drank bootleg whiskey, danced waltzes
and ate turkey.
In general, one could say that there was a lot of integration, but
everyone in their place; The poor, the townspeople celebrated in the
public square while the rich celebrated with the family, in the house
where the party was held, where the Vicar.
The couple received very expensive gifts. The groom received a

convertible car with personalized license plates. “The bride was
given a 24-piece gold case,” for the many guests they were likely
going to have at home. The gifts are in accordance with the social
and economic position of the guests of Bayardo San Román's family.
And these gifts symbolize the role of man and the role of woman.
The wedding was quite traditional and the party was held at the
bride's home. Pura Vicario sentenced; “Our daughters get married in
our pigsty or they don't get married” and they extended the pigsty to
the neighboring houses to be able to receive all the guests. We said
in another program that here the Vicario family wants to follow the
tradition that the wedding party should be held in the bride's house,
if possible, regardless of whether she is rich or poor.
Bayardo is a foreigner and brings his entire family. It is finally his

wedding that is going to take place, and he is going to have a family
with Angela Vicario, so Bayardo is quite coherent, he is thoughtful
and does not hide his roots, he does not hide where he comes from.
At a wedding it is very important to know who you are marrying,
especially if you are a foreigner, this can cause mistrust, and Bayardo
avoids it at all costs.
At this wedding, Bayardo wants to show that he is a good provider

for the family, he wants to satisfy Angela's wishes and that is the
reason why he buys the house, at all costs, from Xius's widower.
He wants to show that he is capable of supporting a family and giving it

the best.
The wedding was quite expensive. Santiago Nasar was finally able to
calculate the costs of the entire wedding, with the data that Cristo Bedoya
provided him at the last minute. This event creates competition among
the men of the town. Bayardo organizes a rather extravagant wedding,
and he does it to impress everyone and the best of all is that he succeeds.
In the end Santiago Nasar also wants a wedding like this, where people
won't live long enough to tell about it. An elegant wedding, a beautiful
wedding and a wedding where a lot of money has been spent on all the
preparations.
The wedding starts badly and ends badly. It is a marriage of convenience

where there are drawbacks of “lack of love,” and it ends with murder.
What starts badly ends badly. It was an event that did not have a happy
ending. All the families were involved both in the activities of the largest
public celebration that had ever been held in that town, and in the crime
of Santiago Nasar.
The wedding between Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Román was an
extremely sad and unfortunate event.
So, from the arrival of Bayardo San Román looking for a perfect woman
to marry, from the participation of all the inhabitants of the town in the
event, and from the calculation of the expenses by Santiago Nasar. In the
narration of this program he spoke to them
Isabel O'Donoghue.
Until next time!

Hello!
Welcome to the series about Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a novel

Last week we talked about the most important social event in the
society of the novel. We saw how Bayardo San Román organized a
very expensive and very elegant wedding, which creates competition
and makes Santiago Nasar say that this is how his marriage will be
and that is why he calculates the costs to know how much money he
needs for his marriage with Flora Miguel.
Today we are going to talk about the most important religious event in
the novel, and it is the arrival of the bishop. The lightning visit that the
bishop makes to the town.
The bishop is a very important religious character. He is the

regional head of the Catholic Church. Bishops visit towns
sporadically, and normally go to celebrate the sacrament called
“Confirmation.” When this happens, people feel very blessed, and
very grateful for being visited by this religious figure. It is a privilege
to have a bishop visit the town.
For this reason, everyone goes to the port to welcome him, with
the exception, of course, of some people like Plácida Linero, who
is not going, or the narrator's mother, Luisa Santiaga, who is
waiting for the bishop to come to her house. to visit her and her
family.
The bishop is the representation of God on earth and his visit

shows us the importance of religion in the novel. The people have
a lot of religious faith so they have brought all the sick people to
the port, so that he can cure them of their ailments, heal them.
For this reason, Santiago Nasar dresses in pontifical white, to show

respect. Furthermore, Santiago wants to kiss her ring, which is a
gesture highly valued by people. It is a privilege to kiss the bishop's
ring, out of reverence and respect.
Despite the bishop's distant behavior with the parishioners, they

love him, respect him and the people do not receive him empty-
handed. Santiago Nasar himself “had contributed with several loads
of firewood” for the operation of the ship. In addition, people had
brought him guacals with fattened roosters so that he could enjoy
the soup of his favorite dish, “the cockscomb soup.”
In general one would say that the parishioners want the bishop to
remember them fondly, they want to thank him for the visit. The
people are fascinated by the bishop's visit and don't have much of
a problem with the way he treats them.
Still, we see that Father Carmen Amador is so focused on the

arrangements for the bishop's visit that he forgets to warn poor Santiago
Nasar about the twins' plans. That day the bishop for Father Amador
and for everyone in the town was a hero, an idol and everyone expected
him as such.
In addition to the entire town, the civil, ecclesiastical and military

authorities were at the port to receive him. We know that Colonel Lázaro
Aponte was also present there, to welcome him.
In contrast, the bishop arrives on a very opulent, quite modern ship,

which demonstrates his lack of humility, since as a religious character
he should be more austere. Here we see a direct link between religion
and economic power.
That is why there is no connection between what people expect from

the bishop and what he gives them, which is simply a blessing by
commitment, not a kind and sincere blessing, and he immediately goes
back where he came from, he does not even give them his time.
Furthermore, Plácida Linero says that the bishop hates that town and
one wonders: And how does she know that? Because it says? Well,
because he simply hasn't been very friendly on subsequent visits, and
that's starting to have some consequences. Plácida Linero, an important
resident of that town, does not take the task of going to receive him,
because she does not want to receive slights from the bishop.
This bishop behaves coldly with people. He is very distant, he does not
share with people. What's more, he doesn't get off the ship, he has no
compassion for the parishioners.
To top it all off, when the ship turns around to return, the river water
wets all the people and soaks their clean, spotless clothes with water,
which is neither fair nor pleasant.
So, from the words of Plácida Linero about the bishop's hatred
for the people and the white pontifical dress of Santiago Nasar,
to the gifts that the inhabitants of the town brought him to
welcome the bishop, in the narration of this program he spoke
to them Isabel O'Donoghue.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about the bishop's lightning visit to the town,
about the gifts that the inhabitants brought him, about the coldness
of the bishop who did not want to get off the ship to share with the
people.
In today's program we will talk about the victims in the novel.

But are there other victims besides Santiago Nasar, who was
butchered like a pig? The answer clearly is: yes, as we discuss
below.
Obviously the main victim was Santiago Nasar because he lost

his life. He was brutally murdered like a pig. His crime was
horrendous and this situation makes him overshadow the other
victims, among whom is his own mother, since Plácida Linero
lost her only son. She was an older woman, a widow, and after
Santiago's death, she had no one to take care of the family's
business, or her estate El Divino Rostro, the woman was left
very alone, and very sad.
When one thinks of Bayardo San Román, we see that he is a

man who bets everything to find the woman he wants, investing
time and money to achieve it. That investment is of no use to
him, since he married a woman who dishonored him.
Bayardo, lost his honor, is a victim of Angela Vicario's behavior

because she did not meet society's expectations.
Bayardo is also a victim of the religion that condemns the loss
of virginity because it considers it a sin, and fornicating goes
against its religious values.
After the wedding, Bayardo is literally left empty-handed. The

family has to come look for him in town and Xius's widower's
house, his prized property, is destroyed over time until it is left
in ruins. The poor man's life basically ran out, he was left alive.
And speaking of the house of the Widower of Xius, we see how
the widower is also a victim of the economic power that Bayardo
has.
The widower is a lonely man, quite old. We know that his wife
Yolanda de Xius is dead, and he is very affected by her death
and in his house he keeps very precious memories of his
beloved wife, and Bayardo forces him to sell him the house,
then the widower becomes a victim of Bayardo , a victim of a
ruthless man, who does not care about the feelings of others to
get what he wants.
The twins Pedro and Pablo are very young boys and are victims of honor.
To restore honor to the family they have to kill Santiago Nasar, they have
to become all murderers. The narrator tells us that they told the news to
everyone, that they were going to kill Santiago Nasar, because the poor
people hoped that someone would try to prevent them from committing
the crime. That is to say that they did not want to kill Santiago, they did
not want to become murderers, but unfortunately that was not possible
so they had to do it: Kill Santiago Nasar, butcher him like a pig.
Furthermore, the twins are victims of the conservative society that

imposes unfair rules. Prudencia Cotes' mother says that “honor does not
wait” and Prudencia Cotes points out that she “would never have married
Pablo Vicario if he did not fulfill his duties as a man,” that is, if he did not
kill Santiago Nasar. That is to say that twins are victims of society, they
are victims of the pressure that strict society puts on them.
The women in the novel are victims of traditions, of marriages of

convenience. This is the case of Plácida Linero, Angela Vicario and Flora
Miguel. Their parents have organized their marriages without asking their
opinion and for that reason, they have to suffer.
We know that Plácida Linero's marriage “did not have a moment of

happiness.” Angela Vicario was so upset by her marriage to Bayardo
San Román that she protested by losing her virginity, and Flora Miguel
did not have a relationship with Santiago that was a loving relationship,
their relationship was “without intentions of the heart,” meaning that they
were not in love. .
But, when Angela Vicario is returned home, and when Santiago Nasar is
murdered, Flora Miguel is left alone, without a fiancé, without a husband.
This beautiful, elegant, rosy woman, from a wonderful family,
who “had been godmother” to many children in the town, ended badly,
and very badly.
The narrator tells us that she fled the town out of spite, with a border
lieutenant, who “prostituted her among the rubber tappers of Vichada,”
which is the name of a region in the Colombian jungle, far from the
Caribbean. Flora Miguel ended up being a prostitute. This really is a
pretty sad and tragic ending for a girl from a good family.
Cristo Bedoya and the narrator are also victims because they lost
their best friend. To the point that the narrator returns 23 years later
to the town to “try to recompose the broken mirror of memory” in
relation to the death of Santiago Nasar. He clarifies that he was his
best friend, which means that his death affected him a lot.
In the last chapter, other victims appear, such as the good Don
Rogelio de la Flor, the husband of Clotilde Armenta, the owner of the
milk store, who, horrified by the horrendous crime, suffered a heart
attack and died.
There is also the town's midwife, a woman named Aura Villeros, who
suffered a bladder spasm with the news of the crime and needed a
catheter to urinate. And, another case that we see is that of Hortensia
Baute who fell into a crisis of penitence and one day she could not
bear it anymore and the woman went crazy and ran naked into the
street.
On the other hand, Divina Flor is a victim of Santiago Nasar's abuse,

just as Victoria Guzmán is a victim of Ibrahim Nasar. These two
women are victims of the differences between social classes.
So, from the most obvious victim who loses his life, which is
Santiago Nasar, from Flora Miguel who is a victim of marriages of
convenience and the circumstances for not being able to
marry Santiago Nasar, from Bayardo San Román who is a victim

of religion and traditions, in the narration of this program Isabel
O'Donoghue spoke to you.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we identified the victims of the novel.

In addition to Santiago Nasar who loses the most precious thing a
human being has, which is life, we saw that there are also other
people who are victims, like Bayardo San Román himself, as well
as Flora Miguel who ends up being a prostitute.
Today we will talk about the community's participation in the

Santiago Nasar crime. But then, weren't the ones who killed him
Pedro and Pablo Vicario? So why think anyone else was involved?
Well, because no one did anything to prevent the crime, and if one
knows that a murder is going to be committed and does nothing,
then one is guilty. Or, putting it in terms
Catholic religious, a sin of omission is committed. One could have avoided

something and didn't do it.
The twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario are the material authors of the crime.
They made the decision to kill Santiago Nasar, to take his life.
Even though there was social pressure, they could have decided to talk to
Santiago Nasar, and ask him to marry Angela Vicario to restore honor to
her and the family, and the matter was settled. Everything would have
ended there. But no, they didn't do it, their decision was not rational but
animal. They decided to kill Santiago, they are adults.
Also, it is true that the twins live in a sexist, Catholic and conservative
society, and that is why they have values rooted in that society. Their
actions respond to the social values of the time.
And in that amalgam of values, one finds Bayardo San Román, who is
responsible for the death of Santiago Nasar, for having returned his wife
home. Bayardo could have perfectly forgiven Angela and stayed to live with
the love of his life, with his better half. In fact, we see that he returned to
her several years later, forgave her. So Bayardo could have prevented the
death of an innocent man, so Bayardo has a direct involvement in the crime.
We have mentioned several times that Pablo Vicario's girlfriend, Prudencia

Cotes, would not have married him “if he did not fulfill his duties as a man,”
and Pablo Vicario knew that very well, so Prudencia Cotes, with that rigid
way of thinking, put pressure on Paul to kill Santiago, and he did it to keep
the woman, his future wife, happy.
On the other hand, in Santiago's house there are many culprits,

from Victoria Guzmán who received the news that Clotilde
Armenta sent her with the beggar, of the twins' plans to kill
Santiago Nasar. Victoria Guzmán ignores the warning, simply
saying that 'those guys don't kill anyone.' She does not take
seriously the very urgent message, which warned Santiago about
his crime.
Plácida Linero, Santiago's own mother, is also guilty. In the midst

of the confusion, the woman locked the door and poor Santiago,
although he ran desperately, was unable to enter his own house
and was killed at the door. So Plácida Linero was wrong as she
also did with the interpretation of dreams, she could not see the
relationship between trees and birds with death.
Some townspeople like Yamil Shaium are also guilty, how is it

possible that they know that the twins are going to kill Santiago
and not tell him anything? Yamil's excuse was, well, if that's not
true, I'm going to cause unnecessary inconvenience to Santiago.
The patriarch, the wise man, the leader of the Arabs did not see
the danger and his decision not to warn Santiago Nasar was not
correct.
Nahir Miguel offers Santiago to leave his house with his rifle, but
they are just words. When Santiago leaves his house, he does
not give him the rifle nor does he accompany him, he literally
leaves him alone. If Nahir Miguel had gone out with the rifle to
accompany Santiago, the twins might not have tried to kill him.
Flora Miguel, I hope they kill him and that doesn't help either.
When looking to the side of the authorities. All authorities are

guilty. The mayor of the town, Colonel Lázaro Aponte, did not
arrest the twins, he took away their knives and sent them home,
as if they were two little children. When they give him the news
that the twins have other knives, he does nothing, enters the club
social to confirm a game of dominoes. He is a very irresponsible man.
The police officer also knows about the twins' plans and does not
question or arrest them. He passes the message to the mayor and
that's it. He does not use his authority to protect Santiago's life, nor
to avoid problems in the town.
And Father Carmen Amador, well he simply doesn't do anything

either. He is busy with the bishop's visit and although he is fully
aware of the plans that the twins are going to execute, he forgets to
stop by Santiago's house to warn them. Nor do we see that he has
spoken with the twins, nor with Angela or with Bayardo himself.
Father Amador, like the police, look the other way and do nothing.
The narrator tells us that the twins made their plans known to about
twenty people. They said they were going to kill Santiago Nasar and
that's why the news spread quickly throughout the town, so everyone
knew. However, no one does anything to prevent the crime, so one
could conclude that everyone is guilty. The narrator tells us that the
inhabitants “were horrified by their own crime,” meaning that they
themselves recognize that they are guilty. Furthermore, the crowd
was located in the square “as on parade days” to witness the crime.
So, from the passive participation of Bayardo San Román in the

crime of Santiago Nasar for having returned Angela Vicario to her
house, from the pressure from Prudencia Cotes for the twins to kill
Santiago, and from the lack of authority of the police officer Leandro
Pornoy for not arresting the twins, in the narration of this program
Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.

Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about the community's participation in the

Santiago Nasar crime. We said that, although the Vicario twins are
the material authors of the crime, other people could also be
considered guilty because, knowing the twins' plans, they did not
do anything to prevent the crime.
In today's program we will talk about the authorities and their role
in society, and of course their actions in the Santiago crime.
Let's start with the investigating judge. A young man who recently graduated
who was in charge of handling Santiago's case. We know that he had barely
graduated, that he had just graduated, and he came to town to investigate
the crime with the graduation dress.
This makes us think that justice sent the first one who was ready, or the only
one who was available. This judge did not have any experience to deal with
such a complex investigation, with a crime as atrocious as that of Santiago
Nasar.
This lack of experience is clearly seen in the story, as the narrator says that
the summary was speculative, creative, almost like a work of literature, instead
of adjusting to the rules and legal terms that must be precise, the terms
judicial proceedings that require an investigation of this caliber.
This judge, who has no name because the narrator does not tell us his name,
which implies that it could be anyone, wrote a summary in red handwriting
and one wonders, is this perhaps to underline that Santiago Nasar's crime
was horrendous? ? But knowing that this character is not taking the case
seriously, one realizes that the red letter is part of the informality. One, neither
in school nor in real life, in formal situations writes with a red ink pen, one
does it with a black or blue ink pen, which are the most appropriate colors.
As if this were not enough, at the end of the summary he painted a heart
pierced by an arrow. These drawings, or rather, these nonsense take away
from the seriousness of the investigation and leave a lot to say about the
person who makes them.
The investigating judge does not know what he is doing, he has no experience
and he does what he can to investigate the crime. In the end he accepts the
thesis of the defense lawyer, that Santiago Nasar's crime was in legitimate
defense of honor and now, the case is closed. We do not see that the judge has
carried out a serious investigation to do justice to Santiago Nasar and

his family.
Secondly, let's look at the mayor of the town, Lázaro Aponte.

He had been a colonel, so one might think that he was a disciplined and
strict man, as the military are. In contrast, this character looks tired,
carefree and too flexible.
The narrator tells us that when people ended up in jail “because of

some brawl,” the colonel allowed prostitutes to visit so that the prisoners,
that is, his friends, could have fun. The colonel is a corrupt guy, who
does not fulfill his role as an authority. It does not impose order on
society.
Furthermore, like any military man, one would expect him to be

conservative and religious and also consistent with his religion and beliefs.
We know that the colonel, by mail, has learned spiritualism and that he
practices it, and this goes against Christian values.
When analyzing his professional ethics one is left with one's mouth
open. The colonel sees the twins with weapons, with two knives, he
sees that they are ready to commit a crime, and instead of arresting
them and opening a serious investigation, as it should be, he takes the
knives from them and sends them to the house. .
Of course, arresting the twins means work and he's lazy, he doesn't
want to create work for himself. Later, when he finds out that the twins
have found other knives, he does not give importance to a matter as
serious as this. This selfish man thinks about his well-being and his fun
and gives priority to confirming “a game of dominoes.” Saving a person's
life is not important to him. For the colonel, it is more relevant to be with
his friends and have a good time, be cool, and that's it.
On the other hand, Leandro Pornoy is the town police officer. A police
officer is an officer who is responsible for maintaining public order, that is
say that there are no fights or riots in the streets. A police officer is in
charge of the security of citizens, that is, ensuring that people do not
suffer robberies, robberies, criminal attacks or being killed.
A police officer is in charge of enforcing the laws. As we can see, a police

officer has very great power as well as specific functions in society.
In contrast, Leandro Pornoy is in charge of “buying a pound of liver for

the mayor's breakfast.” But this work is not within his duties. Your job
description does not include running personal errands for your boss. This
police officer has no idea what his job means and that's why he doesn't
do it. He seems ignorant, stupid and very cowardly. His job was to arrest
the twins and he didn't do it, his job was to interrogate the twins and he
didn't do it either.
A police officer has a very important and active role anywhere in the
world and this police officer, Leandro Pornoy, is like a loose wheel who
doesn't know where he's going and doesn't care either. In the end, he
ended up dead, as a result of being gored by a bull and we don't even
know why that happened to him.
Now let's go to the religious authorities to see if they are better than the
government and civil authorities.
We have said that the bishop is the most important religious authority.
By representing God on earth, you must show love for your neighbor,
your task is to serve people and do so with love and respect. It must also
celebrate masses, Conformations and other types of religious celebrations
typical of the Catholic Church. The job of a bishop has a fairly clear
description of his work.
He must also be sober and humble.
But the bishop we meet in Chronicle of a Death Foretold seems like an

alien. He's cold, arrogant, no
He shares nothing with the people and as if all this were not enough,
according to Plácida Linero, he hates that town. So one could conclude
that the bishop does not play his role well, this character, like the judge,
the mayor and the policeman, does not do his job well.
The next religious person with a rank of authority is the priest, Father
Carmen Amador. Your role, in addition to saying mass and carrying out
all religious ceremonies such as baptisms, marriages and funerals, has
to be a person who cares about the well-being of the people. A priest
must provide counseling to parishioners, he must give them moral and
Christian guidance, among which is love of neighbor and the prohibition
against killing.
But the priest Carmen Amador doesn't do any of that, he's only worried
about his boss's visit and that's it. He doesn't even bother to warn
Santiago with the excuse of the bishop's arrival. Well, one understands
that the man was going to be busy that day, but if he did not have time
to warn Santiago, he could have perfectly well sent someone to do it,
perhaps a nun, for example. His role in the novel is regrettable, this
character does not do his job either.
We also have the town doctor, we know there is a doctor, Dr. Dionisio
Iguarán. Normally a doctor in a town is respected by the people, he is
seen as an authority because he looks after the health of the people.
But we don't see that doctor doing anything, he only appears to criticize
what Father Carmen Amador did in Santiago's autopsy and tells him
that he was very rude.
He also appears to tell the narrator that Xius's widower died of moral
grief and that's it. It's as if the town didn't have a doctor.
Cristo Bedoya is trying to find Santiago and someone asks him to help
them with a sick person, but Cristo Bedoya is just a medical student.
Then the reader wonders, where is
the town's doctor, Dr. Dionisio Iguarán? The narrator has the
answer: “Doctor Dionisio Iguarán was absent.” It is an absent, not
present authority.
Finally, let's look at the case of Jamil Shaium, the patriarch of the
Arabs. He can be considered an authority because he represents
the cultural roots of the Arabs, people respect him a lot and go to
him to ask for advice. This man, quite old because the narrator tells
us that he had arrived with Ibrahim Nasar and the last Arabs, talks
to Santiago and does not say anything to him, he does not warn
him. He gets scared and only thinks that, if the crime situation is
false, it will cause Santiago discomfort for no reason. He does not
stop to think that if the situation is not false it will cause Santiago Nasar's death.
He is an old and passive man who has no wisdom and if he has it,
he simply does not use it.
Well, talking about the authorities in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

is really exciting. García Márquez leaves them in a very bad light in
the novel. Overall, we learn that the authorities in the novel are
incompetent, that they do not do their jobs, that they are lazy,
selfish, and corrupt.
So, from the lack of authority of all these characters that we have
named today: the investigating judge, the mayor, the policeman,
the bishop, the priest, the doctor and the patriarch of the Arabs, in
the narration of this program Isabel spoke to them O'Donoghue.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about the authorities and how GABO presents
them in the novel. We said that in general the authorities do not do
their job, that they are mediocre and that they seem to be more
concerned about their personal well-being than the well-being of
the community.
In today's program we will talk about destiny. This word can be defined
as a supernatural force that acts on human beings and also on the
events they face throughout their lives. A person's destiny would be
like an inevitable chain of events from which the person cannot escape.
The novel begins with, “the day they were going to kill him, Santiago
Nasar got up at 5:30 in the morning to wait for the ship in which the
bishop arrived.” This first sentence is very clear and tells us that this
was the end of Santiago, that he will have no other option than to be
killed, that he will die. Although the reader does not know the reasons
why they are going to kill him, he does know that that is what is going
to happen to him.
As you continue reading the novel, you discover that someone who
was never identified had slipped a letter under the door of the house in
which they warned Santiago Nasar that they were going to kill him and
revealed the details to him. The message was on the floor when
Santiago Nasar left his house, but he did not see it, nor did Divina Flor
who opened the door for him, nor did anyone see it.
This part of the novel is truly heartbreaking and one wonders, how is it
possible that no one has seen the said letter?
A letter so important that it could have saved Santiago Nasar's life,
why didn't anyone see it?
We find the answer in page 382 of the summary where the narrator
tells us that the investigating judge wrote the marginal sentence in red
letter that says that, “fatality makes us invisible.” This episode confirms
that Santiago Nasar's destiny was to die, that there was nothing to do
there. Although there were many things that could have been done to
prevent the crime, people acted as if they were blind, as if they had no
use of reason.
This unfortunate card that no one saw is the product of fate or an

uncontrollable force about which nothing can be done.
We learn that Santiago Nasar had a well-established routine, that

every Monday he went to his hacienda El Divino Rostro, but this
routine was affected by the bishop's visit. As a result, he had to dress
in white and not khaki, which was the outfit he wore to go to the
cattle ranch where he was carrying firearms. Furthermore, Margot,
the narrator's sister, invited him to breakfast and Santiago postponed
the invitation until later. So that day Santiago got up on the wrong
foot, everything went wrong for him to the point of losing his life.
There is another destiny that appears in the novel as a product of

circumstances and it is the case of Divina Flor who, according to the
narrator, “knew she was destined for the furtive bed of Santiago Nasar.”
This shows us that Divina Flor was going to follow in the footsteps of
her mother Victoria Guzmán, who had been Ibrahim Nasar's lover
until he ran out of love and took her home as a servant.
Divina Flor lives in Santiago's house, he is her master and he is

going to do with her whatever he wants. We heard him say that that
morning before his death when he told Divina Flor that, “it is time to
unravel.” Divina Flor and her mother are defenseless and cannot do
anything against their master. That is the destiny that has marked
their lives. The popular saying that; “Destiny shuffles the cards, but
we are the ones who play them.” Due to the circumstances in which
she was born, Divina Flor will not be able to change her destiny.
Due to her social and economic position, Divina Flor's fate is sealed
even before she is born, due to her mother's fate with Ibrahim Nasar
and Divina Flor can't do anything about it.
Returning to Santiago Nasar, he always dreamed of trees and

according to Plácida Linero, the previous week he had dreamed
that he was alone; without company, in a tinfoil airplane that flew
without stumbling through the almond trees. Plus, he woke up
covered in bird shit.
Santiago tells these dreams to his mother, who “had an accurate

reputation as an interpreter of other people's dreams.” However,
Plácida Linero did not notice any ominous omens. The woman
could not see the relationship between the trees and the planes
with Santiago's death.
As we mentioned in another program, trees are a symbol of life, but

also of death because they are used to make coffins for burials.
On the other hand, the fact that Santiago was on the plane alone,
elevated from above, that was an indication of his death and Plácida
could not establish that relationship. The narrator tells us that
Plácida Linero “did not pay attention to the trees” and only saw the
positive side, that of “good health,” but not the negative side, that
of death.
In Colombia, when things are bad for people, people say, “I'm
screwed, I'm screwed, we're screwed,” meaning that they are going
through a bad period, that they are going through a time of bad luck
and it can't be done. nothing to avoid it. Santiago Nasar was
covered in bird shit, which came from above, there the man could
do nothing to change his destiny. This is confirmed later when
Santiago leaves the house and people say that he looked like “a
ghost,” meaning that he was dead while he was alive.
The narrator tells us that, “there was never a death more foretold.”
And one wonders, well, if everyone knew that the twins were going
to kill him, if the news was public knowledge, then,
Why didn't anyone do anything to prevent crime? The only answer

is to blame fate, Santiago was unlucky.
On the other hand, the narrator tells us that Colonel Lázaro Aponte,
who was able to prevent the crime, “entered the social club to
confirm a game of dominoes, but when he came out again, the
crime had already been completed.” By now, the mayor must have
understood that the twins' plans were serious, however, he was
unable to act, and when he wanted to do so it was too late. The
colonel did not arrest the twins because, “no one is detained for
suspicion.” The colonel who knows the power of weapons did not
see the danger due to things of fate.
People inexplicably became blind and callous that day.

Well, the townspeople really aren't like that. Let's look at some
examples of the sensitivity of the townspeople.
Santiago is moved by Victoria Guzmán's reaction when she

snatched the rabbits' guts that morning and threw them into the
trash. Santiago told her, “don't be barbaric, imagine it was a human
being.”
The townspeople are not insensitive, but that fateful day they were.
Evidence of this is that at the end of the novel we see the impact
of the crime on several of the inhabitants and the narrator tells us
that the people “were horrified by their own crime.” After the murder
people were horrified by what had happened.
We know clearly that the twins did not really want to kill Santiago
Nasar, he was their friend. They could have spoken with Santiago,
reported him to the police and at that time the justice system could
have forced Santiago to marry Angela Vicario to restore his honor.
But the twins did not choose that option, which is a rational option.
They told their plans to about twenty people who went to buy milk
at the grocery store.
Clotilde Armenta and those people spread the news throughout the
town.
What the twins were waiting for was that someone would do
something to stop them from committing the crime, but this did not
happen. It is obvious that when a conflict involves a life, someone
does something to avoid it, but in this case no one did anything, not
even the authorities.
The twins' plans did not work and they had to become murderers.
That was their destiny, to defend the honor of the family and
Santiago's destiny to die. The twins did everything possible to get
someone to stop them from committing the crime and they did not
succeed. This has no logical explanation.
Clotilde Armenta sent an argument with the beggar to Santiago's

house, but Vitoria Guzmán, who had the power to have prevented
the tragedy, deliberately made the decision not to say anything to
Santiago or Cristo Bedoya, much less to Plácida Linero. She only
said that “those guys don't kill anyone,” that those are “drunk talk”
and that “there is no drunk who eats his own shit,” meaning that she
was confident that the twins were not going to do anything and
Victoria Guzmán was wrong in his perception of “those boys.”
Luisa Santiaga is another example that the townspeople did not

want the crime, she says it clearly and expresses that, "it is not fair
that everyone knows that my friend Plácida is going to kill her son
and no one does anything to prevent it." .” Luisa Santiaga leaves
the house, at a long pace, very upset by the situation, as she says;
“Shitty animals, men of bad law,” but the woman could not warn the
victim, she did not arrive in time. Someone from the audience
shouted at her, “Don't bother Luisa Santiaga, they already killed
him.” Luisa Santiaga could not save her godson either despite all
the effort she made because destiny is like that, capricious.
Cristo Bedoya suffers a lot when he learns the news about the
twins' plans. They themselves tell Cristo Bedoya to tell Santiago
that they are going to kill him. The twins send the news directly to
the victim.
Of course, Cristo Bedoya does take the situation seriously and

looks everywhere for Santiago, goes home and runs from one place
to another, but in such a small town, he couldn't find him. The
narrator tells us that no one could understand “so many disastrous
coincidences.” That day the stars were not aligned for Santiago to
live but for him to die, that was his destiny.
This is confirmed when his own mother, Plácida Linero, locked the
fatal door, leaving her son outside. Plácida Linero from where she
was could see the twins and the people running, but she could not
see her son who was running from the other angle towards the fatal
door.
Sometimes you make precise plans about what you want. We see
this clearly with Bayardo San Román, he is looking for a perfect
woman for him and he spares no effort to achieve it, as he goes
from town to town until he finds her.
Once engaged to Angela Vicario shows that he is a good provider

by buying the house from Xius's widower. Well, the way he does it
is terrible, yes, but we are not discussing that now. Bayardo
manages to give Angela the house that she likes the most, then he
brings his entire family so that people know who he is and organizes
an elegant wedding, with important guests from the capital.
But that product that he obtained, that is, Angela, came out with a
very big defect, she was not a virgin. Bayardo didn't expect that, his
plans didn't go well. One could say that his destiny was to be
disgraced.
And because of those things of fate, Santiago's rosy and refined

fiancée, Doña Flora Miguel ends up being a prostitute. The reader
really does not imagine that this is going to be the end of Santiago
Nasar's fiancée. That ending is truly unfortunate and happens
due to fate.
Well, from the fate of Santiago Nasar that is sentenced from the
first line of the novel, from the fate of Divina Flor to the furtive bed
of Santiago Nasar, from the blindness of Plácida Linero with
respect to dreams, from the inexplicable passivity of everyone
the town's characters upon learning of the twins' plans, in the
narration of this program, Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to them.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about destiny, about that uncontrollable

force that makes the characters act in an irrational way, about a
superior force that cannot be controlled and that in the novel
affects Santiago Nasar, who is killed because no one did anything
to prevent the crime, which affects the twins who did more than
one could imagine to have someone stop them from committing
the crime but no one did, and the townspeople who acted blind
and in the end were scared of their own crime.
Today we are going to talk about some important elements in the

novel, symbology.
Let's start with the victim, with Santiago Nasar, the man who lost his life
without understanding his death. The man who was killed because he
was accused of having disgraced Angela Vicario.
We see that at the end of the trial, the investigating judge found no
indication that he had been guilty of the offense.
For this reason, many critics consider that Santiago Nasar symbolizes the
death of Jesus Christ. The narrator tells us that Santiago had a wound
that had gone through the palm of his hand, so that it looked like a stigma
from the crucified man. Santiago Nasar also dies stabbed against the
door of his house, a wooden door that could refer to the cross where he
died.
Jesus.
We have mentioned the topic of dreams in other programs. When talking

about dreams we find trees. We know that trees can have several
meanings, on the one hand, they can mean life, or “good health” as
Plácida Linero said, however, trees have a cycle and they die, in addition
to them the wood is removed. to make the box to bury the dead, so that
the trees are also a symbol of death.
Birds normally mean freedom, however, when Santiago Nasar woke up,
“he felt completely splattered with bird shit.” These free birds don't treat
him well, they screw him up. In the end, Nahir Miguel tells us that when
Santiago Nasar found out about the twins' plans “he looked like a wet
bird.”
From this we can conclude that Santiago's freedom was going to be

ruined. In the end Santiago is not represented as a bird that flies freely
but as a small bird, a defenseless bird that also has to carry the weight of
the water, which restricts its freedom, since it is wet.
The weather element also appears and there is not much clarity in
this because for some characters like Victoria Guzmán the sun had
gotten hotter than in August, which is normally a hot month in the
Caribbean, but the narrator tells us that a gentle drizzle fell like the
one that Santiago had experienced in his dream, this is confirmed by
Colonel Lázaro Aponte who said that it was raining, Margot spoke of
a climate like Christmas and Pablo Vicario himself said that a sea
wind was blowing and that the sky was starry.
Finally, the reader wonders, well, what was the weather like in that
forgotten town? People talk about the weather, but there is no clarity
and the same thing happens with the death of Santiago Nasar, the
weather can be a symbol of confusion. People mysteriously did not
know what to do to avoid the crime of Santiago.
The weather can also be a symbol of mystery because the death of

Santiago Nasar is just that, a mystery since, although Angela Vicario
accused him of having disgraced her, the investigating judge did not
find any indication that Santiago Nasar had been to blame for the
offense then, who was? Angela's disgrace becomes a mystery as
well.
The names of the characters in the novel, as we have already

mentioned in other programs, are religious names and also surnames
such as Vicario and Nasar. There is a name that we have not said
anything about in this series and it is Pura Vicario who sometimes
appears as Purísima. This name indicates purity and represents the
very purity that is expected of women, and Pura Vicario is a symbol
of that, of the perfect woman that society expects, of the woman who
knows her role and puts all her efforts into executing it as she pleases.
of place.
Speaking of purity, Angela Vicario was returned home because she

was not a virgin, because she did not meet society's expectations.
Angela broke the social order, she didn't do what she had to
do, did not remain a virgin. Angela disgraces herself, she

disgraces her husband, the family and the entire society. Virginity
is a symbol of purity, obedience to religion, and family and social
stability. By not being a virgin, Angela Vicario broke the social
order. This symbol is very important to understand the novel.
The twins Pedro and Pablo Vicario murdered Santiago Nasar

with some rustic, elementary knives, one of them made by
themselves at home. The twins carried the knives in their hands
and not in a cover as men traditionally carry knives.
From this a fairly obvious thing emerges and that is that the twins
had in their hands the decision of whether to kill Santiago or not.
They use those knives to kill pigs and are forced to use them to
defend the family's honor. Several experts say that knives
symbolize destiny.
On the other hand, Victoria Guzmán was dismembering the

rabbits with a knife and when Santiago grabbed Divina Flor by
the wrist, she showed him the bloody knife and told him, “let go
of it white, you will not drink that water while I am alive.” This
suggests that Victoria Guzmán wants to try to change the destiny
of her daughter, who the narrator tells us “knew she was destined
for Santiago Nasar's furtive bed.” So the knife here is also linked
to fate.
The twins went to the butcher shop twice to sharpen their knives.
There is a popular adage that says that when someone has
“knife tongue”, that is, a “well-affiliated” tongue, the person does
harm when speaking, whether by insulting or speaking badly of
others. The fact that the twins sharpened the knives reflects the
strict and inflexible attitude of society.
Another symbol that we see in the novel is that of flowers because

for Santiago Nasar flowers had a direct relationship with death.
Santiago Nasar told the narrator that he did not want flowers at
his funeral, without knowing that the next day the narrator was
going to make sure there were none. Flowers are a symbol of
joy, people send them as gifts on many important events. The
bride at a wedding carries a bouquet of flowers, however, flowers
are also used at funerals so they could be a symbol of negative
things, of bad luck.
To finish, we read in the novel that Angela Vicario wrote 2,000

letters to Bayardo San Román over 17 years, that is, over half
her life. At first these letters were engagement obituaries, later
they were messages from a furtive lover. Angela Vicario began
to perfume the letters from a fleeting girlfriend until they became
unworthy letters from an abandoned wife, who invented cruel
illnesses to force him to return to her.
What the narrator tells us is quite dramatic, Angela did not throw
in the towel, she did not give up. The cards represent the illusion
and keep it alive. The cards represent persistence. In the end,
Angela fulfilled her mission, Bayardo returned to her, so the
letters she wrote were not in vain.
Well, from the trees that represent life and death, from virginity
that represents purity and social order, from the knives that
represent the destiny that is in the hands of the twins, and from
the cards that represent illusion, in The narration of this program
spoke to you Isabel O'Donoghue.
Until next time!

Hello!

Last week we talked about various symbols in the novel and we

said that many critics compare the death of Santiago Nasar with
that of Jesus, we also said that knives can be symbols of honor
and the letters that Angela Vicario wrote to Bayardo San Román
could be symbol of persistence and enthusiasm to continue living.
Today we will talk about the relevance of the novel's themes in

today's society. Could it be that what GABO tells us in Chronicle
of a Death Foretold is a thing of the past and irrelevant in modern
society?
Let's start with the themes that are relevant today and first of all is the
central theme of the novel which is honor.
The Vicario twins butchered Santiago Nasar like a pig for a matter of
honor.
We had said that the word honor is defined as the moral quality that
drives a person to act rightly, fulfilling their duty and in accordance with
morality. Honor also means respect and a good opinion of the moral
qualities and dignity of a person.
Morality is defined as the philosophical discipline that studies human

behavior in terms of good and evil.
If we start from these definitions, honor is something that will always

prevail in a society because for there to be harmony we must act in a
righteous manner and if people do not follow the law, various punishments
are imposed.
On a personal level, if someone feels dishonored, take action. For

example, if someone has a partner who is disloyal or if one country
commits an act of aggression against another, there are repercussions.
So honor will always be an important value and will never go out of style.
In the novel the town is visited by a very important religious leader, the
bishop. The most important religious leader of Catholicism is the Pope
and we see from the news that when the Pope visits countries he is
received with honors by the president of the Republic and by the most
important people in the country. Many people also wait for it and attend
the masses that the Pope celebrates, so this religious theme has not
gone out of fashion either.
Regarding the ineptitude and level of corruption of the authorities, there

are examples everywhere, at all levels. The news shows episodes of
corrupt politicians, of authorities who do not
They do their job as it should be, just like what happens in

Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Corruption is something that has
been present in society and that will surely be there.
Regarding marriage, there are many cultures where marriages

of convenience are popular, people celebrate them without any
problem. So today there are also arranged marriages like in the
society of the novel.
Different religions have different codes of sexual morality, which

regulate sexual activity or assign norms to it. In Christianity this
value has been losing importance and today the man does not
care if the woman is a virgin or not, since the practice of sexual
relations before marriage has become common. However,
virginity has been considered an important value in most
religions and today it is important in some religions such as
Islam.
María Alejandrina Cervantes had a brothel with mulattas,

meaning that in the town people allowed prostitution. Today
there is also prostitution and with the development of technology
and communications it is possible that this practice is easier to
carry out. So prostitution has been a thing of the past and also
of the present.
Santiago Nasar was an immigrant, his father Ibrahim Nasar had

arrived on the Colombian Caribbean coast with the last Arabs
and the oldest ones spoke in Arabic. Nowadays in every country
we find immigrants arriving, and like Santiago Nasar's family,
they continue speaking their own language and preserving their
customs. Immigration is a current issue.
In modern society there are also rich and poor as in Chronicle

of a Death Foretold. There are billionaires who have the luxury
of buying the mansions they want like Bayardo San Román
does and who have cattle ranches like Santiago
Nasar. There are also poor people who work for the rich like
Divina Flor and Victoria Guzmán do. Furthermore, the job of a
butcher has not gone out of fashion, as has the job of a
telegrapher, which does not exist today due to the development
of communications and the Internet.
On the other hand, people today also experience inexplicable

things, which are attributed to fate. If a person dies in an
accident, people blame fate because fatality is something
unpredictable.
There are other topics that are not relevant today, of course.
This is the case of marriage, since people no longer marry for
life. In most countries divorce is legal and there are laws that
protect women.
There are also more equal rights between men and women.
Men no longer have the role of being family providers like
Bayardo San Román, because women work and contribute to
the family budget. There are also men who stay at home taking
care of the children while the women work.
Sexual harassment is not frowned upon nowadays. There are

laws that protect the rights of people who work doing domestic
tasks and if a man sexually harasses a woman, as Santiago
Nasar does with Divina Flor, the woman denounces him and
the man is punished by both the law and the scandal. public.
Even though modern society is more developed. On the news

we see that there are still murders. There are massacres where
people are killed as if they were animals, like Santiago Nasar
who was butchered like a pig. There are countries where life is
worth little, or worth nothing, and violence persists as a result of
war and terrorism.
Well, from topics that are still relevant today like the honor and
influence of high-ranking religious people, from marriages of
convenience that still exist in some cultures, to topics that are
less relevant like sexual harassment and About marriage for life,
in the narration of this program, Isabel O'Donoghue spoke to you.
This is the last program in this series about Conica of a Death

Foretold. I wish all listeners a happy week.
See you later!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• García Márquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a death foretold .

New Pocket Editions; 001 Edition. January 9, 2003
• Chronicle of death foretold (8 May 1987 France). Francesco

Rosie. Cartagena de Indias, Mompox. Panavision arco 2 srl
Italmedia film soprofilms. Les films ariane fr3 films Production.
LINKS
https://www.youtube.com/@linguamigos
https://linguamigos.blogspot.com
https://www.amazon.com/author/isabel2023
THE AUTHOR

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Teaching literature has always been my passion. I fully enjoy reading

Welcome to the series on “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” a novel

To understand the book well, you have to start by knowing its

Reading García Márquez is really exciting. His stories, in addition

Gabriel García Márquez, also known in the world of literature with

Aracataca. In his works you can breathe a Caribbean atmosphere,

Aracataca, his hometown, is truly an idyllic place, as it is located not

García Márquez was the son of a telegrapher. That profession as such

As a curious fact, some of the family's names appear in their novels.

García Márquez's grandparents were decisive in the author's literary

This war left the Colombian economy completely devastated. The

Well, a key book in GABO's grandparents' house was the

His grandmother was Spanish, more specifically she was

The assassination of Gaitán is of great significance in Colombian

GABO's journalistic influence is evident in his works, in fact,

As Santiago Nasar expressed it well in the novel “Chronicle of a

During his 87 years of life, García Márquez experienced a universal culture.

García Márquez is one of the most important writers of the Spanish

synopsis of the novel. A summary of “Chronicle of a Death of a

I wish all listeners a happy week.

Until next time!

Welcome to the series about “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” the

Today we will summarize the work, and then, in the following

The novel is divided into five fairly well-defined chapters, where

The fact that the novel is not written in chronological order

A very important event that occurs in the first chapter is the

Unfortunately, the bishop, as Plácida Linero predicted, did not

In chapter two Gabo presents us with the visit of an enigmatic stranger,

During the second chapter, the reader learns new information

To the surprise of a modern reader, Bayardo San Román, who

In chapter three, which is perhaps the most dramatic of the novel.

The Vicario family is made up of the mother, Pura Vicario who

In chapter four, the autopsy is performed on Santiago Nasar's

As for Bayardo San Román, he is completely destroyed and locks

At the suggestion of Colonel Lázaro Aponte, the Vicario family

In this chapter more important details appear, such as that on the

Dazed and very confused by the news, Santiago tried to return

Well, from the arrival of the bishop, from the marriage of

I wish all listeners a happy week.

Until next time!

Welcome to the series on “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” the novel

Last time we made a synopsis of the five chapters of the work. We

In today's program we will talk about the cultural and social

understand the behavior of the characters, and allows us to

The true version occurred in 1951, precisely in the Colombian

On their wedding night, Miguel Reyes discovered that Margarita

In turn, Cayetano Gentile was a twenty-one-year-old medical

Point number two – The novel is based on an extremely religious,

Furthermore, from the first paragraph García Márquez presents us

If we look at the case of Bayardo San Román, he is not far behind

Therefore, knowing the religious environment, one is not surprised

Point number three - The society represented in the novel is a

So Prudencia does not show any type of feminine solidarity with

Point number four – For the conservative society of the novel,

Point number five - In the first program we saw how GABO's

Point number seven – Let's take a quick look at the institution of

Marriage is more important than love and is a very relevant commitment

In this learning, people get married in the church, which demands

Women, in addition to being perfect housewives, as they say

was a messenger, because he went to Clotilde Armenta's store to buy

Furthermore, the town priest, Father Carmen Amador, who should be