America Vicuna
The only lover Florentino still sleeps with regularly at the time of Juvenal Urbino's death, America is a fourteen-year-old blood relative of Florentino, who is under his care while attending boarding school in his city. She falls deeply in love with him and eventually commits suicide after realizing that he has stopped sleeping with her because he is in love with Fermina.
Aminta Deschamps
Dr. Lacides Olivella's wife, Aminta plans and leads the silver anniversary party for her husband that is almost ruined with rain, but which she salvages.
Ausencia Santander
Ausencia Santander is a grandmother whom Florentino sleeps with and who ruins his overly simple theories on sexual capacity as based on appearance.
Barbara Lynch
The only daughter of a black Protestant minister, Barbara is a onetime patient of Dr. Urbino's for whom he falls head over heels and whom he sees almost every day for four months. He is completely obsessed with her during that time and promises her many things, and he only ends the affair when he finds out that Fermina has discovered it.
Captain Diego Samaritano
Diego Samaritano is the riverboat captain on the New Fidelity, the boat on which Florentino and Fermina spend the end of their lives. He is especially fond of manatees.
Digna Pardo
An old servant of the Urbino's, Digna Pardo witnesses Juvenal Urbino's ignominious death.
Dona Blanca de Urbino
Juvenal Urbino's mother, Dona Blanca never recovers from her husband's death. She becomes permanently depressed and cruel, and she makes the early years of Fermina's marriage very unhappy.
Escolastica Daza
Lorenzo's unmarried sister, she raises Fermina after the death of her mother, until Lorenzo sends her away and cuts off his support as a punishment for her complicity in Fermina's relationship with Florentino. According to the narrator, her greatest virtues are an instinct for life and a vocation for complicity. She eventually dies in a leprosarium; Fermina never completely forgives her father for sending her away.
Euclides
One of the skilled diver boys who live by the water, Euclides agrees to treasure hunt with Florentino, but instead cons him into believing there really is treasure where there is none. He disappears permanently after Transito informs Florentino that he is being scammed.
Fermina Daza
Dr. Urbino's wife--and the first and last love of Florentino Ariza. Fermina Daza is headstrong, prideful, passionate and often angry. She is also extremely well-respected in the city for her beauty, grace, and decency, even in the closed ranks of the upper-class into which she marries. After Urbino's death she realizes that the majority of her life has been defined by being his wife, and she finds an independence that allows her to fall in love with Florentino Ariza.
Florentino Ariza
Florentino is a man obsessed by love his whole life, obsessed specifically by his love for Fermina Daza for over fifty-one years. He is Fermina's first love, but she rejects him after a secret engagement and correspondence over her teenage years, and he spends his life waiting for her husband to die--while carrying on many love affairs. He is a poet, the president of the River Company of the Caribbean, and lover of all sentimental literature about love.
Sister Franca de la Luz
The Superior of the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, Sister Franca de la Luz is responsible for expelling Fermina. She later approaches Fermina to persuade her to listen to Dr. Urbino's suit for her hand.
Gala Placidia
Gala Placidia is Lorenzo Daza's servant, who comes back to them after their long absence and helps Fermina reopen the house. She also is sent by Fermina to retrieve all of the letters and tokens she sent Florentino after Fermina rejected him.
Hildebranda Sanchez
Fermina's cousin and lifelong friend, Hildebranda also suffers from forbidden love-for a married man who is twenty years her senior. She never fully recovers, even after she has married another man. She aids Fermina with her continued communications with Florentino on their trip, and she teaches her a lot about freedom and fun.
Jeremiah de Saint-Amour
A good friend of Juvenal Urbino and a great chess player, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour is known to all as an Antillean refugee, disabled war veteran, and photographer of children. Only after his death, from his suicide note, does Urbino learn that he was actually a fugitive from Cayenne, escaping a life sentence for an unspeakably horrible crime. He kills himself with cyanide at the opening of the novel because he had decided long ago that he would not live into the indecency of old age. He is survived by his long-term mistress, whom Urbino also did not know about until Saint-Amour's death.
Dr. Juvenal Urbino
A great patron of his Caribbean city, Juvenal Urbino is a renowned doctor and famous member of a noble family. He is the husband of Fermina Daza, whom he marries for practical and not emotional reasons, although he comes to love her deeply. He is an extremely meticulous man who loves music and hates animals, who expects a perfectly run household, and who does not retire before his death at 81, which occurs when he falls from a ladder while trying to retrieve his parrot from a tree.
Dr. Lacides Olivella
Juvenal Urbino's beloved disciple, Dr. Olivella is a well-preserved man of fifty with a rather effeminate air. He is celebrating his silver anniversary as a doctor on the day of Juvenal Urbino's death.
Don Leo XII Loayza
Florentino's paternal uncle, Don Leo gets him started in the shipping business, and he provides for Transito after Don Pius fails to--and then dies. His favorite pastime is singing at funerals, and his life goal is to break glass with his voice. He is a self-described "poor man with money."
Leona Cassiana
The true woman of Florentino's life, although neither of them ever knows it, Leona is responsible for pushing Florentino to the top of his company, and she follows him up but never surpasses him. Florentino makes multiple attempts to sleep with her, but while she would have accepted at one point, she is too late and sees him as a son. She remains a lifelong friend of Florentino.
Lisimaco Sanchez
Fermina's maternal uncle, Lisimaco hosts Fermina and her father when he takes her away to forget Florentino.
Lorenzo Daza
Fermina's father, Lorenzo came from San Juan de la Cienaga soon after the cholera epidemic with his only daughter and his sister. He is a mule trader with a reputation for horse theft, and he eventually is exposed for his many immoral and illegal business dealings. His only goal in life is to make his daughter a lady.
Lotario Thugut
A friend and coworker of Florentino at the telegraph office, Lotario Thugut is a German émigré. He teaches Florentino how to play the violin. He also spends most of his time at a transient hotel, which he eventually purchases.
Lucrecia del Real
An old friend of Fermina's who visits her every Thursday after Urbino's death, Lucrecia is accused in the local gossip papers of having had an affair with Urbino, and although she did not, she stops visiting Fermina, who takes this as an admission of guilt and thus the end of their friendship.
Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino
Juvenal's father, Marco Aurelio Urbino was a doctor who died during the great cholera epidemic, during which he was a civic hero. After seeing the symptoms of cholera in himself, he locks himself away in quarantine to die and writes a long goodbye letter to his family, refusing to see any of them in person.
Dr. Marco Aurelio Urbino Daza
Juvenal Urbino's and Fermina Daza's only son, Marco Aurelio is a doctor in the tradition of his father and grandfather, but an undistinguished one with no worthy accomplishments. He has produced no sons to carry on the family name. He encourages the relationship between Florentino Ariza and his mother as a way to remain happy in her old age.
Widow Nazaret
The Widow Nazaret is the second woman whom Florentino sleeps with, and she is the first after Fermina with whom he has a continuing relationship-although it is without fidelity or real love. They lead each other into a profligate way of life.
Ofelia Urbino
Urbino's and Fermina's daughter, Ofelia has her paternal grandmother's prudish sensibilities, and she is disgusted by the relationship that blossoms between her mother and Florentino Ariza.
Olimpia Zuleta
A pigeon seller's wife whom Florentino drives home in a storm, Olimpia participates in a slow courtship by pigeon courrier with Florentino and eventually sleeps with him. He leaves painted markings on her, and her husband finds them and murders her brutally for her infidelity.
Don Pius V Loayza
Florentino's father, who does not acknowledge his bastard son except to provide for him until his death. Don Pius was also a bastard, but with his brothers he became very successful in the riverboat industry. His handwriting is exactly the same as Florentino's, and he too was a man primarily interested in love who wrote love poems. He is elaborately unfaithful to his wife throughout his life, but she only finds him out after his death.
Rosalba
The woman whom Florentino, somewhat arbitrarily, deduces is the one who took his virginity, Rosalba is a young mother traveling on a riverboat with Florentino. She is his temporary cure for his unrequited love for Fermina.
Sara Noriega
A woman whom Florentino meets at the Poetic Festival, Sara Noriega was a poet when younger. She is moved to tears at Florentino's disappointment at not winning the poetry contest. They sleep together for several years until Sara insults Fermina, after which Florentino no longer can look at her in the same way.
Transito Ariza
Florentino's mother, Transito is a freed quadroon with an instinct for happiness frustrated by poverty. She is hardworking and serious, and she makes a good living providing discreet loans to distinguished families who have fallen in fortune. She is the only person Florentino tells about his love for Fermina, and she does all she can to help him, until she becomes senile and loses her memory with age.
