The reason that the development of the town is so linear is because Marquez creates a lot of parallels between the fictional and real world. For example, Garcia Marquez's account of the banana workers massacre is drawn from the actual events that took place between Colombian government forces and strikers of the United Fruit Company in the Colombian town of Cienaga in 1928. Strikers had gathered in the square near the train station of that town, and when they refused to go away, they were shot. After the event, a "conspiracy of silence" was created around the actual facts of the incident, especially concerning the number dead. In his version of the story, Marquez remains generally true to the basic elements of the known facts with some exaggeration concerning the details and the actions of the banana company. Over three thousand die in the Macondo massacre, and the only surviving witnesses are Jose Arcadio Segundo and a small child. With the exception of his nephew, Aureliano Babilonia, no one believes Jose Arcadio Segundo's story of the massacre, including the families of the dead.
By creating this linear history that is somewhat parallel to the real world, Marquez deceives the reader into believing that the way in which Macondo develops is a linear one. However, there is more to the story than that.
The narrative is given to us, for the most part, following this linear sense of time, so that we always know roughly where we are in this linear story. One thing that allows us to plot the place in the linear history is the various “invasions" which occur. Usually outsiders arrive bringing the latest in technology or bureaucracy: gypsies, government officials, priests, military forces, the railway, the Banana Company, and so on. These seemingly positive contributions to the society actually create a subtly negative effect on the town and slowly tear apart it’s innocence.
The development of the Buendia family in a sense underscores this linear sense of time; they form a series of figures who, while eventually ending their life in solitude, take the form of different people in history. Jose Arcadio is, in some sense, a Renaissance man of many interests and ambitions. The inventions and creations that he manages to think of are not good enough in order for him to improve the community at Macondo ; his son Aureliano becomes a great military leader, who fights many battles and is a main participant in the civil wars; in turn, he is succeeded by a bourgeois farmer/business man, Aureliano Segundo and by his twin brother Jose Arcadio Segundo, who works for the American capitalists and becomes the radical labour organizer. And so on. So as we move from generation to generation, we sense a strong linear progression within the family of the Buendias.
The way in which the member of the Buendia family view their history is strictly circulatory. They do not seem to notice the linear progression of events. After all the apparent changes in their main occupations and lifestyle, their personalities constantly repeat the experience of earlier generations. They look at their pasts as if they only realize the cycles in which they are moving. When Jose Arcadio Segundo builds a canal, Ursula says, "It's as if time had turned around and we were back at the beginning" Later, when Aureliano Triste decides to bring the railroad to Macondo, Ursula "confirmed her impression that time was going in a circle."
There's a strong sense of destiny about this circularity; once a person has been named, the major characteristics of his or her life have been determined, and the person is doomed to repeat the events of the lives of their ancestors. It seems however, that the characters draw themselves into this circularity by way in which their personalities progress. They follow one narrow path to eternal solitude. In fact, one of the most obvious instances of cyclical structure is found when observing the lasts thoughts of Colonel Aureliano and Aureliano Segundo: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice" (1). Two generations later, Aureliano Segundo has his last thought before his death, "Years later on his death bed, Aureliano Segundo would remember the rainy afternoon in June when he went into the bedroom to meet his first son" (186).
Rather than thinking about their present state and the events that are going on around them, these two characters choose to reminisce about their past. They look back at the time of the beginning of their cycle which is a positive one. Their deaths however, symbolize the final chapter of their cycle.
Some characters seem to almost leave their cycle by escaping their lives at home. Jose Arcadio for example, left with the gypsies and was able to start a new life away from home. When he returns to Macondo however, he enters the circulatory history and we are once again proved that “races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”
