Following the signing of the armistice, peace still does not reach Macondo. Fearful of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's threats, the Conservatives plot an assassination attempt that - by a twist of fate - brings Fernanda del Carpio from Bogotá to the town. When she marries Aureliano Segundo, one of the bastard Arcadio's twin sons, she gives Úrsula Iguarán her first legitimate heirs.

Meanwhile, José Arcadio Segundo, the other twin, will accomplish the patriarch's wild dreams of connecting Macondo with the world. The railroad's arrival opens the doors to the banana company, which unleashes the town's downfall and ultimately fulfills Úrsula Iguarán's curse: for the lineage condemned to one hundred years of solitude were not granted a second opportunity on earth.