In a heavily ironic scene, José Arcadio Buendía is reunited with the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom he murdered before leaving Riohacha. When José Arcadio Buendía sees the figure of an elderly man in his room one night, the narrator notes that: 

It was Prudencio Aguilar. When he finally identified him, startled that the dead also aged, José Arcadio Buendía felt himself shaken by nostalgia. “Prudencio,” he exclaimed. “You’ve come from a long way off!” After many years of death the yearning for the living was so intense, the need for company so pressing, so terrifying the nearness of that other death which exists within death, that Prudencio Aguilar had ended up loving his worst enemy. He had spent a great deal of time looking for him.

In life, José Arcadio Buendía and Prudencio were far from friends. When word spread that José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula, who were cousins, had not consummated their marriage in order to prevent the prophesied birth of children with animal features, Prudencio publicly accuses José Arcadio Buendía of impotence, leading José Arcadio Buendía to shoot and kill him the next day. After being haunted by the ghost of Prudencio, José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula leave Riohacha to found Macondo.

Now, however, the two former enemies look upon each other as close friends. The narrator notes that, ironically, Prudencio “had ended up loving his worst enemy,” searching for him across the region after leaving Riohacha. Due to the loneliness of death and old age, the two men are now pleased to see each other and spend a good deal of time in each other's company during the later years of José Arcadio Buendía’s life.