In the Prologue, Marquez recalls a time, October 26, 1994, when he was working as a reporter in Cartagena. The newspaper's editor-in-chief, Maestro Clemente Manuel Zabala, assigns Marquez to cover the emptying of the burial crypts at the nearby Santa Clara convent. Once a functioning religious institution, then a hospital, it is set to become a fancy hotel. 

Marquez goes to the convent and watches the workers unceremoniously excavate not only clergy members, but aristocrats, too. In the crypt of the second Marquis de Casalduero, there are three sections: one for the marquis—who was buried elsewhere—one for his wife, and one for his daughter, Sierva María de Todos Los Ángeles. When the workers open her crypt, out spills twenty-two meters of copper-red hair. According to the foreman, human hair continues to grow a centimeter per month after a person dies. He estimates, given the length of her hair, that Sierva passed away some two hundred years ago. 

This reminds Marquez of a story his grandmother told him as a child, about a young girl with hair like a trailing "bridal train" (5) who was killed by rabies, after being bitten by a dog. She was "venerated" (5) in the coastal Caribbean towns in which, while still alive, she had performed miracles.