“Love in the Time of Cholera” is based on the love story that spanned over five decades between Florentino and Fermina. Florentino sees Fermina one day as he is delivering a telegram to her home and immediately falls in love with her. Over the next few years they write letters back and forth and eventually Florentino asks Fermina to marry him. She accepts, but then her father finds out and takes her away to the country to keep her from Florentino. Her father wants her to marry a prestigious man and Florentino simply works for a telegraph company. After many years and celibacy on both sides, Fermina returns to the city she left and runs into Florentino at the market. She tells him that their relationship was only in their imagination and that she could no longer marry him.

Fermina gets ill and a doctor named Juvenal Urbino comes to her because it is presumed that she has cholera. He determines that she only has an intestinal problem, but there brief encounter sparks an interest in her. Juvenal begins to call on Fermina and this time her father is very encouraging. Fermina and Juvenal wed and embark on a two year honeymoon to Europe. At this point Florentino’s mother informs him that Fermina has wed and that he needs to move on. Florentino finally breaks his vow of losing his virginity to only Fermina when he is kind of attacked while on a boat. Then a woman who loses her home in the war comes and stays with him and they have sex. From there Florentino begins to keep track of all his sexual encounters with women and using sex to fill the void that Fermina has left behind.

Throughout the years Florentino and Fermina run into each other or hear about the changes in each others lives. Fermina has many children and Florentino remains a bachelor, but receives a prestigious job thanks to his uncle in the ferryboat business. Florentino pledges to go to Fermina once her husband dies, but he begins to get worried that she may die before her husband.

Finally Juvenal passes away in an unfortunate fall from a ladder and Florentino takes the opportunity to tell Fermina that he has remained in love with her for over fifty years. She initially objects to him telling her that and is very angry with him, but by his persistence and patience, Fermina is slowly worn down. The two take a boat trip and finally kiss, then finally make love. It was the first time Florentino had made love and Fermina also wondered if it was the first for her as well. The two were still, were finally in love and happy together.

Classmates

1. Alexandra said that the Bracero Program was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States.

2. Alysia found out that Nicaraguan sign language was spontaneously created by deaf children in schools in Western Nicaragua in the 1970's and 1980's.

3. Bryanna learned that signing in Mayan villages is not taught formally, but through many generations of deaf people there is a way in which tribes will teach their deaf as a community.

4. Francisco learned that Cesar Chavez that he was a field worker who became a union organizer.

5. Jamie found out that in Mayan villages all of the deaf males were married and that the deaf women usually were still single.

6. Jessica found out that Dulce Maria's poem about King Tut is described as erotic, where she has the ability to imagine a physical love relationship between her and King Tut.

7. Kristen found out that the most well known writers associated with Boom era are Julio Cortazar, Carlso Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

8. Mandi has taken 4 semesters of American Sign Language at SRJC.


9. Martin learned that Cesar Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993 near Yuma, Arizona and his body was taken to La Paz, Mexico and laid to rest in front of his office.

10. Silvia found out that Cesar Chavez urged Latinos to vote and traveled as an activist to support the rights of workers.