I started 32 armed uprisings but lost every one. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Before the war, Colonel Aureliano Buendía works as a successful goldsmith, making tiny decorative fish out of gold to help contribute to household expenses. After the war, the gold fish become a pointless way of passing time. One Hundred Years of Solitude in Macondo