Hermosillo is a regional hub through which the novel connects Santa Teresa’s violence to journalism, policing, labor, and cross-border commerce. Reporters travel through the city on their way to investigate, while the commercial networks described in the story run between Hermosillo, Santa Teresa, and Arizona; the connection makes the border less a dividing line than a corridor through which people, goods, and information move unevenly.

Regional Setting and Cross-Border Connections

Hermosillo appears within a larger Sonoran landscape shaped by rapid urban growth and the maquiladora economy. Santa Teresa’s industrial horizon is tied to factories and transport routes beyond the city itself, while the region’s highways and border crossing place local events within a wider system of movement. The novel’s descriptions do not make Hermosillo the center of the killings, but they show why the city matters to the routes and institutions surrounding them.

That regional network is also economic. In a press encounter, Klaus Haas identifies Pedro Uribe as the father of Antonio Uribe and a major transport operator: he owns more than one hundred cargo trucks carrying goods from maquiladoras in both Hermosillo and Santa Teresa across the border every half hour or hour. Pedro also owns property in Phoenix and Tucson. Haas links another branch of the family’s business to Santa Teresa, where Pedro’s brother Joaquín Uribe owns hotels in Sonora and Sinaloa as well as a chain of coffee shops. These details place Hermosillo within a transnational commercial web that also touches the suspects and powerful local interests named in the investigation.

Arrival Point for Reporters

Hermosillo is a practical gateway for journalists reporting from Santa Teresa. In July 1993, Sergio González flew there from Mexico City before taking a bus onward. His assignment concerned the Penitent, but his arrival also introduces a recurring pattern: outside reporters reach the border city by way of a larger regional center, then depend on local institutions and contacts for access to their subject.

The reporting infrastructure is visible in González’s visits to the offices of El Heraldo del Norte and La Voz de Sonora, where he speaks with journalists covering the case. He also meets local officials and arranges to interview the inspector in charge, Juan de Dios Martínez. Hermosillo thus belongs to the story’s media geography even when the reporting itself is conducted in Santa Teresa: it is a staging point from which national attention is directed toward a local crisis.

Investigation and Institutional Limits

Hermosillo is also part of the institutional geography of the cases. After the murder of Isabel Urrea, investigators circulated explanations that framed the killing as a possible robbery or the act of an individual offender. There was no autopsy, at the family’s request, and the ballistic analysis was never made public; it was eventually lost while being transferred between the courts of Santa Teresa and Hermosillo. The missing report turns the connection between the two cities into a measure of investigative fragility: evidence crosses jurisdictions, but its movement does not guarantee that it will be preserved or made available.

The city appears again as a possible source of institutional records. While discussing the Penitent, Juan de Dios Martínez and Elvira Campos consider whether the suspect may have been treated in a psychiatric institution, perhaps in Hermosillo or Tijuana. This remains speculation rather than a confirmed lead, but it shows how the investigation reaches outward through regional systems of care and documentation even as its central suspect has vanished.

Narrative Significance

The novel places Hermosillo between Santa Teresa and larger circuits of transport, reporting, and administration. Reporters pass through it to reach the story; police evidence moves between its courts and those of Santa Teresa; and the Uribe family’s trucking business links maquiladora production to border crossings and American property. Across these appearances, Hermosillo is not a simple backdrop or solution to the mystery. It is one of the connective places through which the novel reveals how local violence is embedded in systems that extend beyond the city where the bodies are found.