In “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the butterflies that follow Mauricio Babilonia are yellow.
Mauricio is a mechanic in Macondo and the lover of Meme, one of the Buendía family’s descendants. His defining magical-realist image is the constant swarm of yellow butterflies around him. They are so closely associated with Mauricio that they continue to appear around Meme during their affair, turning a private romance into one of the novel’s most recognizable visual motifs.
The butterflies are not simply a zoological detail. García Márquez presents them as an impossible event accepted within the novel’s ordinary world, where ghosts, ascensions, prophecies, and long periods of rain receive similar treatment. Their bright color also connects the scene to the book’s recurring use of yellow and gold as symbols associated with change, destruction, and history’s unsettled cycles.
Mauricio’s story ends tragically: Fernanda arranges for him to be shot and falsely identifies him as a chicken thief. He survives but is paralyzed and spends the rest of his life in isolation. The butterflies therefore combine romance, wonder, and foreboding.