Colonia Remedios Mayor is one of the Santa Teresa neighborhoods associated with the city’s dispersed geography and inadequate public protection. Mentioned in accounts of police absence and the areas where women are most often abducted, it belongs to a landscape shaped by rapid expansion, poverty, industrial growth, and persistent violence.

Place in Santa Teresa

The neighborhood appears among the southeastern districts Kessler’s police-escorted tour takes in while he investigates the killings. The city’s neighborhoods are spread across a fragmented urban terrain that includes industrial parks, poorly served residential areas, and outlying settlements. In a broader view of Santa Teresa, the city extends beyond paved streets into poor districts and vacant land, with industrial warehouses and maquiladoras marking the horizon.

Police Presence and Insecurity

During Kessler’s tour, two inspectors acknowledge that police rarely enter Colonia Remedios Mayor, alongside Colonia La Vistosa and Colonia Kino. They describe the absence as a consequence of gangs controlling the drug trade in these neighborhoods. Kessler’s account places the district among the areas where abductions most often occur; he tells the press that walking in these neighborhoods in broad daylight is frightening, and that it is dangerous for women to be outside at night. Most streets away from the main bus routes are poorly lit or unlit, while officers keep out of some districts.

Urban Growth and Narrative Significance

The novel presents Santa Teresa as a city expanding faster than its infrastructure can support. Chucho Flores describes a place with factories, maquiladoras, a cocaine cartel, and a constant influx of workers, but without enough time for its urban systems to catch up. Colonia Remedios Mayor’s brief appearance within this account connects the city’s growth to uneven protection: its residents inhabit a district where public authority is scarce, while the violence around them is treated as part of a larger, fragmented urban crisis. The neighborhood is not developed through a resident’s personal story; its significance lies in the map of insecurity and neglect that the investigation gradually makes visible.