Was Santiago Innocent?

WAS SANTIAGO NASAR INNOCENT? In the novel, ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Santiago never really learns of the motive behind his murder. We are given a very bias view of the reason that he was murdered for. The only evidence against him was Angela’s word. There was no real proof that he was the one who had taken Angela’s virginity. Santiago might have had a very “shit” (Marquez, 8) character, but Marquez subtly lets the reader see the other side of the coin where Santiago may have just been a mere victim of suspicion. This book is left very open ended for the readers to interpret the truth. Sometimes everything we see is not always what appears, sometimes we just need to look a little deeper. We should ask ourselves, could he have been guilty? Or was he just paying for the demeaning deeds of the others? Marquez has made use of magical realism to show God’s justification that Santiago was innocent. “The strange thing is that the knife kept coming out clean,” (Marquez, 119) this line was said by Pedro Vicario, he was talking about the time when his brother Pablo and he were stabbing Santiago with their knives. Here it can be seen that every time they stabbed Santiago, there wasn’t a single drop of blood. This was a sign from God that he knew that Santiago shouldn’t have been brutally murdered as he was innocent. But eventually Santiago does die as God felt that he should rather be dead so that he does not have to face the society and the nasty and dreadful comments that people would pass about him. He wanted to save Santiago from the horror of his society. Angela Vicario was culpable for Santiago’s death. Bayardo brought Angela home on their wedding night, as he found out that she was not a virgin. Angela’s mother beat her on this occasion as she had stained their family’s reputation. Pura held her by the hair