We first meet the character of Pilar Ternera on page 25 of the novel.
Around that time a merry, foul-mouthed, provocative woman came to the house to help with the chores, and she knew how to read the future in cards.
Initially, Pilar took on the role of seductress: she sleeps with Jose Acardio, a boy of only 14, and becomes pregnant with his child. She later engages with Aureliano in the same manner, making her the mother of two sons of the Buendia family. We learn that she came to Macondo “in order to separate her from the man who raped her at fourteen and had continued to love her until she was 22[.]” (28). One could argue that Pilar is continuing this cycle in her relationship with Jose Acardio, taking advantage of a child on the brink of adulthood like she herself had been.
What’s interesting to me about Pilar is, despite her main trait being promiscuity– we learn at one point in the novel that her family includes two children whose fathers are unknown even to her– she still seems to hold a lot of tenderness for the Buendia boys. We get our first hints of this on page 29, when she is the one to treat Jose Acardio’s wounds following a strike from his father, and again on page 35 when Pilar, already pregnant by an absentee father, takes Ursula’s chores up as her own while Ursula is gone to try and find her oldest son– though, she may have been trying to get in their good graces, as she left Jose Acardio’s son to be raised by his grandparents.
The most striking example of Pilar’s care comes on page 67, when Aureliano comes to visit her.
His clothes were smeared with mud and vomit. Pilar Ternera, who lived alone at that time with her younger children, did not ask him any questions. She took him to the bed. She cleaned his face with a damp cloth, took off his clothes, and then got completely undressed and lowered the mosquito netting so her children would not see them if they woke up….. She felt for Aureliano in the darkness, put her hand on his stomach and kissed him on the neck with a maternal tenderness. “My poor child,” she murmured.
In this passage we see Pilar, a friend to Aureliano, helping him in the one way she knows how to. Unlike her time with Jose Acardio, this encounter reads not as driven by lust but instead driven by care.
Pilar had been a family friend even before she took with Jose Acardio, and it’s unclear the extent to which her loyalty lies with the men of the family or the women. Perhaps she, like all of Macondo, is intertwined with the fate of the Buendia family. In any case, there’s no denying her a spot on the family tree.
I agree that Pilar was continuing the cycle of abuse by sleeping with Jose Arcadio; it also seems like her later gentle treatment of him was her way of trying to make up for the abuse (and the fact that she bore his children) in some small way.
I agree and by Pilar saying “my poor child” it appears that she is oblivious to the abuse.
I definitely think she is unknowingly continuing the abuse by abusing the teen boys. It was a bit troubling to see her end up in their family tree in such an unfair manner.