Juan Preciado's dying mother reveals Pedro Paramo is his father and makes him promise to travel to Comala to find him.

Juan arrives in Comala with donkey driver Abundio Martinez, who warns that the town has been dead for many years.

Abundio reveals that Pedro Paramo is also his own father, making him and Juan half-brothers.

Juan enters the ghost town and meets Dona Eduviges Dyada, who welcomes him into her abandoned home.

Pedro's family faces crippling debt following his grandfather's death, threatening the loss of all their land.

Pedro sends Fulgor Sedano to propose marriage to Dolores Preciado solely to erase his family's mounting debts.

Father Renteria accepts a bribe from Pedro and performs Miguel Paramo's funeral blessing despite knowing Miguel's crimes.

Pedro instructs Fulgor to falsely accuse neighbor Toribio Aldrete of falsifying land boundaries, then has him killed.

Juan follows Damiana Cisneros through the ghostly streets of Comala and she vanishes without a trace.

Juan dies of fright in Comala and awakens to find himself buried in a grave alongside a woman named Dorotea.

Susana San Juan and her father Bartolome return to Comala after a thirty-year absence.

Pedro orders Fulgor to have Bartolome killed at his mine so that Susana will be forced to remain in Comala.

Susana San Juan dies alone in her room at the Media Luna ranch, sinking deeper into the night.

Townspeople mistake Susana's funeral bells for a celebration and throw a fiesta, and an enraged Pedro vows to abandon Comala to ruin.

A drunk and grieving Abundio Martinez stabs Pedro with a knife and kills Damiana Cisneros before being dragged away.

Juan Preciado travels to the ghost town of Comala after his dying mother reveals that Pedro Paramo is his father. He discovers Comala is a desolate ruin populated by the dead, and meets figures who piece together Pedro's violent legacy. In the past, Pedro schemes his way to total control over Comala through deception, murder, and bribery, with Father Renteria's corruption enabling his worst crimes. Pedro's single motivation throughout his reign is his obsession with Susana San Juan, whose return and eventual death reshape his entire existence. After Susana dies and townspeople accidentally celebrate her funeral, a vengeful Pedro abandons Comala to deliberate ruin. Finally, Abundio Martinez — one of Pedro's many abandoned sons — kills him in a drunken, grief-stricken rage, ending both the tyrant's life and the town he destroyed.

The headline events of Juan's journey and Pedro's rise and fall.

Young Pedro daydreams about Susana San Juan while running family errands through the streets of Comala.

Eduviges reveals she secretly spent Pedro's wedding night in Dolores's place, making her nearly Juan's mother.

Eduviges tells Juan about the ghost of Miguel Paramo's horse, which wanders the roads to Contla consumed by guilt.

Father Renteria refuses to grant absolution to Eduviges after her death by suicide because she was too poor to bribe him.

Juan overhears a ghostly voice threatening a farmer named Galileo over Pedro's claim to his land.

Juan meets Donis and his companion in a half-collapsed house and learns that she is actually his sister, not his wife.

Miguel Paramo pays Dorotea to procure women for him, and Pedro shows no grief whatsoever when Miguel later dies.

Father Renteria travels to a neighboring town to confess but is refused absolution by a fellow priest who condemns his behavior.

Dorotea confesses to Renteria that she rounded up women for Miguel, and Renteria tells her she will never enter heaven.

Bartolome San Juan lowers young Susana into his mine shaft and makes her search through human bones and remains for gold coins.

Pedro visits Susana in her darkened room and watches her suffering, unable to understand or acknowledge her grief.

El Tartamudo arrives at Media Luna ranch to deliver news that revolutionary forces have killed Fulgor Sedano.

Pedro feeds a group of arriving revolutionaries dinner and secretly provides them with money and three hundred men.

Father Renteria abandons his congregation in Comala and joins the revolutionary forces fighting against landowners.

Abundio Martinez sells everything he owns trying to save his dying wife, but she dies and leaves him destitute and grief-stricken.

Before Pedro's rise, the town of Comala has its own rhythms — a young Pedro daydreams in the streets, priests hear confessions, and travelers seek lodging with Eduviges. The corruption of the town's moral fabric is revealed through figures like Father Renteria, who refuses absolution to the innocent poor while granting it to the guilty rich. Juan's wandering through Comala exposes the ghost community's hidden shames, from overheard threats against farmers to the incestuous couple hiding from the town's sins. In the past, Pedro's son Miguel exploits and destroys lives around him while Pedro remains indifferent, a pattern of abandoned responsibility that extends to Pedro's many unacknowledged children. The late stages of Pedro's reign bring revolutionary violence, the departure of Renteria, and the final collapse of Comala's last structures — ending with Abundio's wife dying and leaving him with nothing.

The side stories, character histories, and supporting moments that fill out Comala's world.

Eduviges speaks to Juan as though she has just received word from his mother, who died a full week earlier.

Father Renteria's niece Ana tells him she cannot be certain Miguel was her rapist, as the attack happened in complete darkness.

Fulgor flatters Dolores Preciado into accepting Pedro's marriage proposal, deceiving her entirely about his true motives.

Pedro throws Dolores out of his home after she admits she dreams of escaping to her sister's house.

A shower of shooting stars falls over Comala the night of Miguel's funeral as Pedro's exhausted workers wonder whether Miguel reached heaven.

Donis's sister appears to dissolve and melt into a pool of mud before Juan's eyes, leaving him unable to breathe.

Dorotea tells Juan she came to Comala searching for a son she believed was hidden from her, only to realize the child existed only in a dream.

Susana shocks Bartolome San Juan by declaring that he is not truly her father and announcing plainly that she is mad.

Susana receives communion from Father Renteria but immediately speaks only of her dead husband Florencio, not of God.

Two elderly townswomen gossip that Susana's illness and death are God's punishment for Pedro's many sins.

Susana orders Father Renteria and Justina out of her room, refusing to repeat the words of the last rites.

Pedro has sex with a frightened servant girl while trying to imagine she is the young Susana he once loved.

Pedro spots the wandering drunk Abundio from a distance and sends Damiana Cisneros to bring him closer.

Abundio Martinez, clutching a bloody knife, drunkenly pleads with Pedro and Damiana for money to bury his dead wife.

Pedro loses feeling in his limbs one by one after the attack, thinks of Susana one final time, and collapses 'like a pile of rocks.'

From the moment Juan arrives in Comala, reality refuses to behave as expected — the dead speak as though living, and the living vanish like smoke. The town's moral collapse is revealed through a series of turning points: Renteria's corruption is exposed, Pedro's cynical use of marriage is shown in detail, and Dolores is cast out for daring to express discontent. As Juan sinks deeper into the ghost town, the physical world itself begins to break apart around him, and death proves no barrier to continued existence. Susana San Juan's inner life — her grief, her refusal of final rites, and her defiance of Pedro's idealized version of her — reveals the hollow cruelty at the core of Pedro's obsession. The novel closes with Pedro's grotesque end: abandoned, stabbed by his own son, and collapsing into the earth of the town he destroyed.

The key discoveries, moral failures, and emotional shifts that define the novel's deeper arc.