José Arcadio Buendía leads settlers to found Macondo, the gypsy Melquíades arrives with marvels, and the novel's temporal structure announces itself in its famous opening sentence.

Macondo is struck by an insomnia plague that erases memory; Melquíades returns from the dead to cure it; José Arcadio Buendía goes mad pursuing science.

Macondo connects to civilization via a road; José Arcadio (son) leaves with the gypsies; Aureliano falls in love with Remedios Moscote, a child he must wait years to marry.

Conservative election fraud triggers a Liberal uprising; Aureliano joins, leads his first revolt, and begins the military career that will define and hollow him over thirty-two failed wars.

The wars end in negotiated defeat; Aureliano escapes a firing squad and a self-inflicted wound; he returns to Macondo and withdraws into his workshop, making and melting gold fishes forever.

Úrsula runs the household across generations; Amaranta's loveless life; Rebeca's mysterious origins; Pilar Ternera's role as lover, mother, and witness to the entire century.

A North American banana company transforms Macondo; the town booms into modernity; foreign enclaves are built; the indigenous population is displaced; the seeds of the massacre are planted.

Three thousand striking workers are massacred by the army; José Arcadio Segundo survives buried under corpses; the government erases the event from history; it rains for four years.

Aureliano Segundo's prodigal eating contests and passionate affair with Petra Cotes; his legal wife Fernanda del Carpio's suffocating piety; Macondo's slow unraveling after the rains.

Aureliano Babilonia grows up in the decaying house; falls in love with his aunt Amaranta Úrsula; their incestuous child is born with a pig's tail; both die; Aureliano deciphers the manuscripts and reads the family's entire pre-written history as Macondo is erased by wind.