The original Buendía: visionary, physically powerful, fatally drawn to ideas too large to share. He founds Macondo in the act of fleeing a haunting, which means Macondo is built on the premise that the past can be escaped. It cannot. His madness — the inevitable conclusion of a mind that reaches further than anyone can follow — ends with him tied to the chestnut tree, raving in Latin, forgotten in the garden he planted.