So the situation went on the same way for another six months until that tragic Sunday when José Arcadio Buendía won a cockfight from Prudencio Aguilar. Furious, aroused by the blood of his bird, the loser backed away from José Arcadio Buendía so that everyone in the cockpit could hear what he was going to tell him.
"Congratulations!" he shouted. "Maybe that rooster of yours can do your wife a favor."
José Arcadio Buendía serenely picked up his rooster. "I'll be right back," he told everyone. And then to Prudencio Aguilar:
"You go home and get a weapon, because I'm going to kill you."
Ten minutes later he returned with the notched spear that had belonged to his grandfather. At the door to the cockpit, where half the town had gathered, Prudencio Aguilar was waiting for him. There was no time to defend himself. José Arcadio Buendía's spear, thrown with the strength of a bull and with the same good aim with which the first Aureliano Buendía had exterminated the jaguars in the region, pierced his throat. That night, as they held a wake over the corpse in the cockpit, José Arcadio Buendía went into the bedroom as his wife was putting on her chastity pants. Pointing the spear at her he ordered: "Take them off." úrsula had no doubt about her husband's decision. "You'll be responsible for what happens," she murmured. José Arcadio Buendía stuck the spear into the dirt floor.
"If you bear iguanas, we'll raise iguanas," he said. "But there'll be no more killings in this town because of you."