Silvia Perez

Silvia Perez is a professor at the University of Santa Teresa and one of Oscar Amalfitano’s first connections in the city. She had met him in Buenos Aires and later seen him twice in Barcelona; when his contract there expired, she persuaded him to take a position in Santa Teresa, rented a house for him, and bought furniture before he arrived. She remains a practical and social presence in the lives of Amalfitano and his daughter, Rosa, even as the city’s violence and their own unease make ordinary gestures of help feel precarious.

Academic and Personal Background

Amalfitano’s move to Santa Teresa was a professional necessity as well as a choice shaped by Perez’s invitation: his Barcelona contract had ended, and she had encouraged him to join the University of Santa Teresa. Her help began before his arrival. She arranged housing and furniture, and Amalfitano repaid her before receiving his first paycheck, anxious to prevent misunderstandings. The house was in Colonia Lindavista, an upper-middle-class neighborhood whose cracked sidewalks and partly abandoned properties offered little assurance that the city was as settled as its appearance suggested.

Perez was established enough in the university community to introduce Amalfitano to the dean of the Faculty of Literature on his second day. Their professional worlds did not guarantee a shared view of academic life: the dean dismissed philosophy as a discipline in decline while defending the future of literature and history. Perez’s role in the narrative is less that of a spokesperson for the university than a guide into its social landscape—someone through whom Amalfitano encounters colleagues, local institutions, and the questions that the city makes difficult to set aside.

Support for Amalfitano and Rosa

As Amalfitano struggles through his first days, Perez offers companionship that extends beyond work. She invites him and Rosa to join her and her sixteen-year-old son for an outing outside the city. Rosa prepares sandwiches, water, and paper cups, and Perez drives the group east through a valley and into the desert and mountains. She describes their destination to the others as both a place for recreation and a place with mysteries, including sounds at a lookout point that she attributes to the wind. Amalfitano regrets accepting the invitation and falls asleep on the way, but the trip still shows Perez trying to make a shared family outing possible.

Her support is not limited to social invitations. On another evening, after Amalfitano speaks with her by phone about his fraying nerves, she urges him not to give in to paranoia and reminds him that women are usually abducted in other parts of the city. She also suggests another weekend outing for Amalfitano and Rosa, this time to an outdoor restaurant outside town with a pool and views of a quartz mountain. Her reassurance is humane but limited: it cannot settle Amalfitano’s fear, and his nervous laughter at the thought of being careful goes unexplained to her. Their exchange exposes the distance between an effort to soothe and an anxiety that cannot be made ordinary by advice.

Perez’s family also becomes part of the practical fabric around Amalfitano. When he encounters her and Rosa after class, he offers to buy them a soda; they explain the public protest taking place nearby. Rosa accepts Perez’s invitation to a dinner at her home, where three feminists from Mexico City are staying. The scene places the family in contact with a wider circle of women concerned with the city’s violence, even as Amalfitano continues home separately.

Civic Engagement and the Killings

Perez is not merely an observer of the investigation into women’s disappearances and murders. She describes a protest in front of the town hall as a demand for transparency in the investigation. Its signs call for an end to impunity and corruption, while uniformed police watch from beneath the colonial building’s arches. Perez and Rosa return to the protest after explaining its purpose to Amalfitano. The scene makes the demand public and concrete: the protesters seek answers about disappearances and killings, and the police are present as witnesses to a challenge directed at the institutions responsible for investigating them.

Her concern also surfaces in a telephone conversation after Amalfitano watches the news. He has spoken with Perez about the way the Sonora and Santa Teresa police are handling the crimes, and she is outraged by their conduct. This response joins her personal support for Amalfitano to a clear judgment about institutional failure. The novel offers no indication that her protest or anger changes the course of the investigation; instead, her presence marks the persistence of public scrutiny amid a crisis repeatedly met with inadequate official answers.

Narrative Role

Perez links several scales of life that might otherwise remain separate: a visiting professor’s precarious adjustment, a father’s concern for his daughter, university relationships, and collective opposition to violence against women. Her care takes practical forms—housing, furniture, invitations, a phone call—and civic forms—explaining the protest, participating in it with Rosa, and voicing anger about police conduct. These actions do not make her a solution to Amalfitano’s distress or to the crimes. Their significance lies in the contrast they establish: there is a social world still trying to sustain ordinary connection and demand accountability, while the city’s growing violence continues to strain both forms of response.