Reinaldo

Reinaldo is a television host in Hermosillo whose friendship with Florita Almada places him between public broadcasting and the campaign to make Santa Teresa’s killings of women impossible to ignore. He helps Women of Sonora for Democracy and Peace speak on television, resists the station’s attempt to discipline him for doing so, and later guides journalist Sergio Gonzalez into Florita’s guarded circle. His role is not that of an investigator: it is to open a channel, defend the people using it, and carry the killings into a public conversation that institutions would rather contain.

Television, advocacy, and the limits of the broadcast

On April 2, Reinaldo’s program featured Florita and activists from Women of Sonora for Democracy and Peace. Florita introduced the women, who spoke about impunity, police laxity and corruption, and the growing number of dead women since 1993. They appealed to the state governor to address what they called an unsustainable situation in a country that claimed to respect human rights and the law. The broadcast made the activists’ criticism explicit and connected an escalating pattern of deaths to the conduct of public institutions.

The program exposed Reinaldo to immediate pressure. The station head called him and came close to suspending him; Reinaldo, in a nervous fit, told him to fire him if that was what he had been ordered to do. The manager called him an agitator, and Reinaldo shut himself in his dressing room. He spoke by phone with people in Los Angeles who wanted to hire him, while the producer urged the station head to go easy on him. The station head and producer eventually asked him to forget the confrontation and stay. Reinaldo did not simply accept their appeal: he said he would think about it and noted that he had other offers. The episode leaves his position unsettled, balancing his willingness to put the issue on air against the professional leverage of a possible departure.

Reinaldo and Florita Almada

Reinaldo’s relationship with Florita is both personal and public. He trusts her enough to make her part of his broadcast, while she remains the figure around whom the activists’ appearance is organized. Later that night, after a party at his apartment, Reinaldo called her near dawn. She told him she had been dreaming about him: in the dream, a boy resembling Reinaldo watched meteors fall on a beach in Sonora, the waves reaching his shins. Their exchange is an intimate counterpoint to the station dispute and the public urgency of the program, but it does not establish that Reinaldo accepts her visions as fact.

The broadcast reaches beyond the studio. Elvira Campos, director of the Santa Teresa psychiatric hospital, saw the program and mentioned it to Juan de Dios Martinez; Don Pedro Rengifo watched it at his ranch, and El Tequila saw it in the penitentiary and brought it up to Klaus Haas. Haas dismissed what the women said, insisting that the killer continued to kill while he remained imprisoned. The spread of the program and the divergent responses to it show that Reinaldo’s platform carries the accusation into police, ranch, and prison settings without guaranteeing that its audience will act on it.

Helping Sergio Gonzalez reach Florita

When Sergio Gonzalez went to Hermosillo to seek Florita, Reinaldo told him that seeing her would not be easy because her friends protected her privacy. He described that circle as a human shield around her, then arranged a meeting for that night. Reinaldo’s protection is practical as well as rhetorical: he brings Sergio together with Jose Patricio, Florita’s lawyer, and the three travel in Jose Patricio’s car to her house. Sergio is admitted not as a crime reporter—he has to explain that he works on the arts page—but as someone Reinaldo and Jose Patricio choose to take to Florita.

On the drive, Reinaldo tells Sergio a story about a famous television host who had been rejected by Jose Patricio and wanted Reinaldo as an audience for his confession of despair. Reinaldo recalls initially feeling disgust and envy, then describes listening to the man’s account. His anecdote presents him as a media insider familiar with celebrity, rejection, and the vulnerable private life beneath public visibility. It also gives Sergio a measure of Reinaldo’s own past and voice before the group reaches Florita’s modest house.

Reading the visions, and what remains unresolved

At Florita’s home, Sergio asks whether she can see deaths in Santa Teresa. Reinaldo is present while she answers cautiously: she describes her visions as things that come into her mind, rather than offering a simple claim of supernatural certainty. She distinguishes ordinary murders, which she associates with a liquid image that settles, from the serial killings, which produce a heavy, metallic or mineral image that darkens as it spreads. She says she sometimes sees the killers’ faces, but forgets them on waking; they appear ordinary yet swollen, and their speech sounds like a mixed-up Spanish she can partly understand.

As Sergio is leaving, Florita says that when these figures speak among themselves, she can tell their joys and sorrows are immense. Reinaldo tries to stop her from telling Sergio more, but Florita continues. Her account insists on emotional magnitude without explaining the killings or identifying a perpetrator. Reinaldo’s presence in this scene is revealing: he protects Florita’s privacy, helps grant Sergio access, and attempts to manage what she discloses, yet he cannot turn her visions into evidence or control how they will be interpreted.

Narrative role

Reinaldo’s appearances link several forms of public speech: activists’ direct denunciation, a television station’s power to permit or punish that speech, a journalist’s pursuit of a story, and Florita’s ambiguous testimony. His intervention helps the activists reach a large audience and helps Sergio reach Florita, but neither connection resolves the murders. The broadcast’s journey through the city and its institutions, followed by Sergio’s guarded interview, makes Reinaldo a mediator whose influence lies in access and attention. The limits of that influence are equally clear: the letters and appeals remain unanswered, institutional failures persist, and even a widely seen program can be dismissed by those who hear it.