The Autumn of the Patriarch

The narrator, returning to the body discovered in the palace, is still unsure whether it’s the body of the General. They clean the body, covered in marine waste and putrefied, and use paraffin and starch to repair the face. Leaders of political parties, ministers, and generals join to celebrate victory over despotism. There is no direction for the nation because the General never left anything in place for the time that he would die—including where he’d be buried.

In his final days, the General can remember very little of his life except flickers of the way the nation was before he ruled or memories of Leticia. She teaches him to read and write. Leticia she also changes the way he presents himself and the way he rules. Leticia pleads with the General that faith and the Church should be restored, and he restores them. Leticia learns to bend the General to her will, but he refuses to marry her at first. When they do wed, Leticia gives birth to their son at the altar before she can say her vows. The wedding is performed in secret so that the people wouldn’t know that the couple conceived a child out of wedlock.