When Colonel Aureliano Buendía is captured and brought to Macondo to be executed, Úrsula is making candy in the kitchen. He gives her all his poetry about his dead wife, Remedios, and tells her to burn it. She promises to do so and leaves him in jail with a revolver.

The military is afraid to execute the colonel, fearing the reaction of the people of Macondo, so they repeatedly delay it. A sex worker tries to avoid taking the military men as clients and tells one of them that whoever carries out the sentence will die afterward. Finally, an official order arrives to shoot the Colonel, so the officers assemble a firing squad.

On the day of the execution, Rebeca wakes up before dawn and waits to see the colonel. The firing squad brings him up and stands him against the wall. Just before they fire, José Arcadio comes out of his house with a shotgun. The firing squad doesn’t resist and leaves town—along with the colonel, who is no longer a prisoner—to free an imprisoned revolutionary general who is on his side, creating a new war.