One Hundred Years of Solitude Part 2

“The situation again became as tense as it had been during the months that preceded the war. The cockfights, instituted by the mayor himself, were suspended” (Marquez 151).

The reoccurring mentioning of cockfights throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude has stuck out to me as I actually just learned about this topic in my cultural anthropology class and the meaning behind them. Cockfights seem to just be a silly betting game; however, they are about power, which also happens to be a theme we’ve seen in this novel. Historically, people have spectated and put on cockfights not for entertainment, but to give themselves the joy of feeling powerful when the animal that they have bet on wins. These fights show who people really are and reveals their true relationships with others. This strikes a chord with Marquez’s writing as it appears to center around how people interact with others and less about what actually happens in the story. In relation to the cockfighting theme of power, we have seen this same yearn for control already from characters like Arcadio, who takes things too far in the previous part of this novel when Aureliano leaves. In addition, the war, which is an extremely large part of the story, is also about power as we have seen a fight between the liberals and the conservatives to own this authority over the country. This makes me wonder if cockfighting is brought up in the story to represent this thirst for control. Or is it just culturally relevant to the country at the time? Or was it even thrown in unintentionally?