“Violence has been a prominent social response to the application of structural adjustment policies throughout Latin America. There are societies in which, things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Violence is a shared disease that seems to arise in all societies where there are profound social differences and exploitation…Many Latin American societies are condemned to bloodletting by the precedents of violence and gross injustice that characterize their culture and their history.” – LeMoyne James, ‘Children of Cain’ 1991

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s text depicts the cultural life and setting of Latin America. His inclusion of conventional values portrayed in the novel such as pride and honor influences specific characters such as Pedro
The women’s lives are bounded by the confinements of their own home, or rather, the cultural values of tradition. Women were forced to marry not based on love, but the family’s own benefit from the marriage.

The men on the other hand, Purisima del Carmen’s sons, are “raised to be men”. They serve in the war, take over their father’s business when he goes blind, drink and carouse along the streets until hours after dark. According to them, or how they were raised, when the family insists on Angela getting married with Bayardo, a man she’s only had a glimpse at, the twins stay out of it because to them it looked like “woman problems,” and “woman problems” become “men’s problems” when the family calls the twins home due to Angela’s rejection from Bayardo. The twins take matters into their own hands, as the family and many in the village expects them to do, to regain the honor of their family. The whole motive for the murder of Santiago Nasar is based on this tradition of honor. After Angela says that Santiago Nasar was the reason for Angela’s humiliated return from her marriage bed, the twins immediately know that they must defend their sister’s honor. The twins’ attorney views the act as a