Character Analysis
In a way, it doesn't even matter who's who when it comes to Angela's identical twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo. Think about it—aren't those some of the most generic names you could possibly think of for Latin American characters?
Does it really matter that Pedro is the more serious of the two and got an awkward genital infection from military service? Or does it matter that Pablo was the one who was six minutes older and insisted that the two kill Santiago even after the colonel takes their knives? We don't think so. Those details make them pretty hazy as far as minor characters go, but we'd say the brothers mainly function as a vehicle for certain cultural values throughout the story.
An Honorable Duty
You wouldn't expect someone who just committed a murder to barge into a church and confess, but that's exactly what Pablo and Pedro did:
"We killed him openly," Pedro Vicario said, "but we're innocent."
"Perhaps before God," said Father Amador.
"Before God and before men," Pablo Vicario said. "It was a matter of honor." (3.2)
But what caused them to do this? What does honor have to do with it? To explain that, we have to talk about something called machismo.
The word machismo is used to describe sexism, misogyny, chauvinism, and hyper masculinity. Basically, machismo is everything that's wrong with being a manly man. In many Latin American societies, men are expected to display this sort of super masculine and aggressive behavior. Part of that is defending one's honor.
Okay, you think, but the brothers' honor wasn't in danger. That's where you're wrong. Since the women in families where basically considered helpless and the property of the men, assaults to her honor were actually assaults to the honor of the men in her family. And what was the most important part of a woman's honor? Her purity—or in other words, her virginity. So basically, taking a woman's virginity before she was married was the worst slap in the face you could ever give the men in her family. Now do you see why this is such a big deal?
So as Angela's brothers, Pedro and Pablo are basically required to go and kill Santiago. Even if they're killed in the process, then at least they get the honor of trying to kill him. If they don't even try, then they will have absolutely no respect in the community. Basically, they wouldn't be men any more.
They Don't Wanna Do It
It's pretty easy to see how patriarchal systems are damaging and negative for women, but they aren't the only victims. Pablo and Pedro are also victims of the system that requires them to display machismo. It forces them to do things that they don't really want to do, even though they would tell you otherwise:
Still, in reality it seemed that the Vicario brothers had done nothing right with a view to killing Santiago Nasar immediately and without any public spectacle, but had done much more than could be imagined to have someone to stop them from killing him, and they had failed. (3.5)
Now, why would they want someone to stop them from killing Santiago? Easy. It's the only way for everyone to live.
There are only three ways for the brothers to retain their honor: they kill Santiago, Santiago kills them, or they are completely prevented from attempting to kill one another. If that had happened, then the twins could say they tried to "restore their honor" without actually having to murder anyone. Angela would also be kind of restored, and no one would be dead.
Yet somehow, in a town where everyone knows the rules, no one stopped them. People say that they think all this talk about murder is just gossip and babble, but they all know how serious an insult to honor is, so they are just as complicit in this whole system of machismo as anyone else.
But think of what life could have been like for Pablo and Pedro if they weren't expected to follow this social script. They would never have killed someone, never have gone to jail, Pedro probably wouldn't have been killed in the military, and the whole town wouldn't have been guilty of murder. But that's not what happened. Just like all of the other characters that are locked into their roles by social norms, Pedro and Pablo are basically just instruments for machismo to flex its ugly muscles in their quiet little town.