Chuy Pimentel

Chuy Pimentel is a photographer for La Voz de Sonora whose brief appearances in the Santa Teresa murder narrative place him behind the camera at press events about the killings. He photographs Klaus Haas during moments when Haas challenges the official account of the crimes and names alleged perpetrators. Pimentel does not explain his own views, but the images attributed to him make the press conference itself part of the record: reporters’ expressions, Haas’s gestures, and the distance between an accusation and its acceptance all become visible.

Identity and Work

Pimentel is identified as a photographer sent by La Voz de Sonora to a press gathering in prison. Unlike the reporters from the other local and regional papers, his assigned role is visual: he stands behind the circle of journalists, and later the narration singles out his photographs as moments within the scene. The text gives no personal history or account of his own interpretation of the case; his presence is established through the work he performs and the pictures he takes.

The institutional setting matters. The reporters gathered around Haas include journalists from El Heraldo del Norte, La Voz de Sonora, and La Tribuna de Santa Teresa, as well as outlets in Phoenix, Hermosillo, and Green Valley. La Voz de Sonora has sent Pimentel as its photographer rather than a reporter. His position at the edge of the group lets him document not only the speaker but also the media audience that will receive, select, and circulate the accusation.

Photographing Haas’s Accusations

At a prison press conference, Haas states that the people responsible for Estrella Ruiz Sandoval’s murder are also responsible for the deaths of at least thirty young women in the city. Pimentel takes his first picture as Haas makes the claim. The reporters’ faces show little enthusiasm: some look at Haas, others consult their notebooks. The image thus preserves a contrast between the gravity of the accusation and the muted response in the room. Pimentel’s photographs do not verify Haas’s words; they record the public conditions under which those words are heard.

Later, Haas names Antonio Uribe as the killer of women in Santa Teresa and the surrounding area, and says that he has met him once. Pimentel chooses that moment to take another picture. The narrative dwells on how the lighting and angle make Haas appear unusually thin, his neck elongated, and develops the image into a strange figure poised to sing. The description shifts attention from the allegation’s evidentiary status to the unstable appearance of the accuser: an image can sharpen a public claim while also making its speaker seem uncanny and difficult to read.

The Camera and the Press Conference

Pimentel continues taking pictures while Haas says that he has been investigating and receiving information through prison connections. No one laughs. The photographs mentioned in the scene include Haas’s lawyer, whose expression suggests she is close to tears, and reporters watching him as he faces the prison wall. The camera registers a room in which information is asserted but not resolved: Haas presents himself as informed and innocent, while the reporters press him for a name and measure his statements against their own doubts.

The novel also gives a reporter’s challenge to Haas’s claim that prison inmates know what happens outside the law. The reporter calls that belief an urban legend, while Haas insists that he meant inmates know what happens beyond the law. Pimentel takes a picture of the reporter, described through her dark hair, profile, and lined eyes. The focus briefly shifts away from Haas, showing that the camera’s subject can be the skeptic as well as the accused. The dispute over what prison knowledge can establish remains unsettled; Pimentel records the confrontation rather than adjudicating it.

Narrative Significance

Pimentel’s recurring function is documentary, but the photographs become more than neutral illustrations. The narrative describes the reporters’ lack of excitement, the lawyer’s distress, Haas’s changing appearance in a photograph, and the reporter who disputes his account. These details place image-making alongside the competing verbal accounts of the killings. A photograph can preserve a face or a moment of accusation, yet it cannot by itself settle who committed the crimes or how the cases connect.

This role resonates with the larger pattern in which the killings become newly visible when numbers rise or a press event draws attention, then recede from public discussion. The episodes involving Pimentel show news photography operating inside that fragile attention: his camera makes the people and gestures in the room recordable, while the questions they raise remain open. He is therefore a witness to the production of public evidence, not a detective or an authority whose pictures resolve the case.