Outside Reading - Week 5, Post A

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"From then on, even in the bloodiest periods of the war, the two commanders would arrange truces to exchange prisoners" (146). In this passage we see the difference in fighting wars. Slightly earlier in the chapter, it was mentioned how a colonel could "persuade" his troops and fight wherever and however he wanted. In the old Mexican culture, war was unfair, and the rich were not involved or harmed. Now, in America, warfare has many rules, and the enemies rarely communicate. Also in America, there is no negotiating for prisoners, as they did in Mexico. The American government does not want to give in to terrorist demands at all, where as in Mexico poor prisoners were negotiated like pawns in the power struggle of the rich and powerful.