There wasn’t a single person, rich or poor, who hadn’t participated in some way in the wildest party the town had ever seen.

The narrator explains that the entire town celebrated at Angela and Bayardo’s wedding party. Earlier, Cristo Bedoya listed all of the food and alcohol that was purchased for the celebration, demonstrating that everyone in town attended the wedding. The fact that a sense of community outweighs class or money shows the tight-knit way the people in this town live. However, this intense closeness also leads to nearly everyone in town eventually participating in some way in the death of Santiago Nasar.

The Vicario brothers had told their plans to more than a dozen people who had gone to buy milk, and these had spread the news everywhere before six o’clock.

Rather than keeping their plan to kill Santiago Nasar a secret so that no one will warn their victim, the Vicario brothers tell everyone they come across of their plan, and eventually, as the narrator explains here, the news spreads to everyone in town. The Vicario brothers didn’t tell others of their plan because they are ignorant or careless, but rather they know that their fellow town members will revel in the drama and gossip rather than try to stop them or warn Santiago Nasar.

Finally, they drank the bottle in silence, very slowly, gazing with the boobish look of early risers at the dark window in the house across the way, while fake customers buying milk they didn’t need and asking for food items that didn’t exist went in and out with the purpose of seeing whether it was true that they were waiting for Santiago Nasar to kill him.

The narrator explains that, as Pablo and Pedro wait for Santiago Nasar to appear in the window, everyone in town finds an excuse to watch them and see if they will actually kill him. The brothers’ plan has become more of a spectacle for the people in town than a very real danger to Santiago. Rather than trying to stop the brothers or even ask if they actually plan to kill Santiago, the townspeople see the anticipation as a source of entertainment.

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