García Márquez' mysterious caudillo, perhaps a composite or a specific individual like Juan Vicente Gómez, symbolizes the abuse of power as traditionally practiced in novels from Amalia to Carpentier's current El recurso del método. In his novel, which resembles El gran Burundún Burundá of his countryman Jorge Zalamea, García Márquez copies his own verbal mythology to describe a dictator whose life extends beyond a hundred years. Combining erotic fantasies, mystery and nightmare visíons, both real and imagined, he uses the oneiric, symbolic, temporal and atemporal to obfuscate his "reality." He uses plural address, interminable sentences, multiple person changes and points of view to reflect the bits and pieces of the rambling memory of the dying dictator.

Part of the recall involves a series of horrific scenes. His bosom companion, Rodrigo de Aguilar, who had once saved his life, is cooked and fed on a platter to his fellow conspirators. The dictator's wife and son are eaten by a pack of attack dogs trained for that specific purpose. Children, used in a scheme to win lottery prizes for the patriarca, are dynamited at sea.

A series of women affect his life. Leticia Nazareno, a novice nun spared from a general exile when the Church refuses to accept the sainthood of his mother, Bendición Alvarado, becomes his only wife and love. Newly wed Francisca Linero, whose husband the dictator has sliced to bits so he can enjoy her, lives to be ninety-six and is buried with honors, though he cannot remember why….

García Márquez mixes horror with black humor. The dictator dips food in private parts to add flavor and defeats a series of deposed dictators at dominoes. So great is his power that when he asks what time it is the reply is: "las que usted ordene mi general…."

García Márquez' vision of the lonely old dictator who dreams, sweats, and recalls serves him as a kind of exorcism. But, however sincere, the novel, a self-repetition, offers us one more version of the idle jabber which characterizes the latest works of many of the greatest Spanish American novelists of the day. (p. 557)