Colonia Hidalgo

Colonia Hidalgo is a neighborhood in Santa Teresa whose brief appearances connect the investigation of the women’s killings to both the city’s uneven urban landscape and the instability of official accounts. Lucia Dominguez Roa was found dead there; later, Albert Kessler walked through the area as part of his inquiry into the murders.

Setting and Urban Context

The neighborhood appears within an expansive city marked by sharp contrasts: industrial zones, poor districts, border traffic, and settlements extending into a fragmented landscape. During his tour of Santa Teresa, Kessler visited Colonia Estrella and Colonia Hidalgo, among other locations, as he examined the geography surrounding the killings. His route placed the neighborhood within an investigation that moved between city streets, industrial outskirts, and border-adjacent districts.

Lucia Dominguez Roa’s Death

On October 10, Lucia Dominguez Roa was found on the sidewalk along Calle Persefone in Colonia Hidalgo. The first police report characterized her as a sex worker and drug user and suggested that she had died of an overdose. By the following morning, officials gave a different account: she had worked as a waitress, and her death was caused by a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The bullet was identified as a .44, probably fired from a revolver.

The circumstances remained uncertain. There were no witnesses, and investigators had not ruled out the possibility that the shot came from a moving vehicle or was intended for someone else. Lucia was thirty-three, separated, and lived alone in a room in Colonia Mexico. Police speculated that she had been walking in Colonia Hidalgo and encountered death by chance; the account supplies no resolution to that uncertainty.

Kessler’s Investigation

Kessler’s visit to Colonia Hidalgo formed part of a broader examination of Santa Teresa’s geography. He moved through the area on foot and by car, accompanied by local inspectors, and later continued his tour through neighborhoods along the border and districts where police presence was rare. His itinerary made the city’s unevenly monitored spaces part of the investigation, without establishing that any particular neighborhood explained the killings.

The juxtaposition is consequential: Colonia Hidalgo is both a place on an investigator’s route and the setting of a death whose initial classification changed within a day. The divergent reports show how a victim’s identity and the meaning assigned to her death could shift in official records, while key circumstances remained unresolved.