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As for Florita Almada, her
second television appearance was less spectacular than the first. She spoke, at
Reinaldo's particular request, about the three books she'd written and
published. They might not be good books, she said, but for a woman who'd been
illiterate until she was past twenty, they weren't entirely lacking in merit.
Everything in this world, she said, no matter how big, was the tiniest speck
compared to the universe. What did she mean by that? Why, that human beings, if
they put their minds to it, could better themselves. She didn't mean that a
peasant, to give an example, would be capable from one day to the next of
running NASA, or even of working for NASA, but who could say that the peasant's
son, guided by his father's love and example, might not end up working there
one day? She, to give another example, would have liked to go to school and
become a teacher, because in her modest understanding, teaching children might
be the best job in the world, gently opening children's eyes, even the tiniest
bit, to the treasures of life and culture, which were ultimately one and the
same. But it wasn't to be and she was at peace with the world. Sometimes she
dreamed she was a schoolteacher and she lived in the country. Her school was at
the top of a hill with a view of the town, the brown and white houses, the
dusky yellow roofs where the old folks sometimes settled to gaze down on the
dirt streets. From the schoolyard she could see the girls on their way to
class. Black hair gathered in ponytails or braids or held back with bands.
Dark-skinned faces and white smiles. In the distance, the peasants worked the
land, reaped fruit from the desert, tended flocks of goats.

She
could hear them, the way they said good morning or good night, how clearly,
effortlessly, she could hear them, every word they spoke, the words that never
changed and the words that changed each day, each hour, each minute. Well, that
was the way it was in dreams. There were dreams in which everything fit
together and other dreams in which nothing fit and the world was like a creaky
coffin. For all that, she was at peace with the world, since even though she
hadn't studied to become a schoolteacher, which was her dream, now she was an
herbalist and, in the view of some, a seer, and many people were grateful to
her for a few little things she had done for them, nothing important, bits of
advice, small suggestions, like for example recommending that they incorporate
vegetable fiber into their diets, vegetable fiber isn't food for human beings,
in other words our digestive system can't break it down and absorb it, but it
helps us go to the toilet, or make number two or, begging the pardon of
Reinaldo and this distinguished audience, defecate. Only the digestive system
of herbivorous animals, said Florita, is equipped with substances capable of
digesting cellulose and therefore of absorbing the glucose molecules that make
up cellulose. Vegetable fiber is the name we give to cellulose and other
similar substances. The consumption of vegetable fiber, even though it doesn't
provide us with usable energy-producing elements, is beneficial. When it isn't
absorbed, the fiber causes the bolus, in its passage through the digestive
tract, to retain its volume. And that causes pressure to be generated inside
the intestine, which stimulates intestinal activity, assuring the easy passage
of waste through the whole digestive tract. Diarrhea is hardly ever a good
thing, but going to the bathroom once or twice a day brings serenity and
balance, a kind of inner peace. Not great inner peace, why exaggerate, but a
small and shining inner peace. What a difference between vegetable fiber and
iron and what they represent! Vegetable fiber is the food of herbivores and
it's small and provides us not with nourishment but with peace the size of a
jumping bean. Iron, in contrast, represents harshness in our treatment of
others and ourselves, harshness in its most extreme form. What iron am I
talking about? Why, the iron that swords are made from. Or that swords used to
be made from and that stands for inflexibility. Either way, iron was the dealer
of death. King Solomon was a wise king, probably the wisest in history, son
himself of the king from Las Mananitas, our birthday song, and protector of
childhood, although it's said he once wanted to slice a child in two. When King
Solomon ordered
the Temple of Jerusalem to be built, he
strictly forbade the use of iron as a support in the construction, even in the
smallest details, and he also forbade the use of iron in circumcision, a
practice, let it be said in passing and with no intention to offend, that
might've had its purposes in those days and those deserts, but now, with modern
hygiene, strikes me as unnecessary. I think men should circumcise themselves at
twenty-one if they want, and if they don't want to, fine. Getting back to iron,
said Florita, let it also be said that neither the Greeks nor the Celts used it
in the collection of medicinal or magical herbs. Because iron signified death,
inflexibility, power. And this was at odds with healing practices. Though later
the Romans attributed a long series of therapeutic virtues to iron, believing
it relieved or cured various afflictions, like the bites of rabid dogs,
hemorrhage, dysentery, hemorrhoids. This notion carried over into the Middle
Ages, in which it was also believed that demons, witches, and wizards fled from
iron. And why shouldn't they when iron was the instrument of their deaths! They
would have been complete idiots if they hadn't run away! In those dark years
iron was used in the practice of the divinatory art called sideromancy. This
consisted of heating a piece of iron in the forge until it was red-hot and then
tossing bits of straw on it, which burned with a blinding brightness, like the
stars. The metal, well polished, served to protect the eyes from the venomous
glare of witches. That makes me think, if you'll pardon the digression, said
Florita Almada, about the dark glasses worn by some of our political leaders or
labor bosses or policemen. Why do they cover their eyes, I ask? Have they been
up all night studying how to help the country advance, how to promise workers
greater job security or pay raises, how to fight crime? Maybe so. It's not for
me to say otherwise. Maybe that's why they have circles under their eyes. But
what would happen if I went up to one of them and took off his glasses and saw
that he
didn't have
circles under his
eyes? It frightens me to imagine it. It makes me angry. Very angry, dear
friends. But it made her even more frightened and angry, and this she had to
say here, in front of the cameras, on Reinaldo's lovely show, so fittingly
called
An Hour with Reinaldo,
a nice,
wholesome program that gave everyone a chance to laugh and enjoy themselves and
learn something new in the process, because Reinaldo was a cultured young man
and he always took the trouble to find interesting guests, a singer, a painter,
a retired fire-eater from Mexico City, an interior designer, a ventriloquist
and his dummy, a mother of fifteen children, a composer of romantic ballads,
and now that she was here, she said, it was her duty to take this opportunity
to speak of other things, by which she meant that she couldn't talk about
herself, she couldn't let herself succumb to that temptation of the ego, that
frivolity, which might not be frivolity or sin or anything of the sort if she
were a girl of seventeen or eighteen, but would be unforgivable in a woman of
seventy, although my life, she said, could furnish material for several novels
or at least a soap opera, but God and especially the blessed Virgin would
deliver her from talking about herself, Reinaldo will have to forgive me, he
wants me to talk about myself, but there's something more important than me and
my so-called miracles, which aren't miracles, as I never get tired of saying,
but the fruit of many years of reading and handling plants, in other words my
miracles are the product of work and observation, and, possibly, I say
possibly,
also of a natural talent, said
Florita. And then she said: it makes me very angry, it makes me frightened and
angry what's happening in the lovely state of
Sonora
, which is my homeland, the place I
was born and will probably die. And then she said: I'm talking about visions
that would take away the breath of the bravest of brave men. In dreams I see
the crimes and it's as if a television set had exploded and I keep seeing, in
the little shards of screen scattered around my bedroom, horrible scenes,
endless tears. And she said: after these visions I can't sleep. No matter what
I take for my nerves, nothing helps. The shoemaker's son always goes barefoot.
So I stay up until dawn and I try to read and do something useful and
practical, but in the end I sit down at the kitchen table and start to mull
over the problem. And finally she said: I'm talking about the women brutally
murdered in Santa Teresa, I'm talking about the girls and the mothers of
families and the workers from all walks of life who turn up dead each day in
the neighborhoods and on the edges of that industrious city in the northern
part of our state. I'm talking about Santa Teresa. I'm talking about Santa Teresa.

As for the dead women of August
1995, the first was Aurora Munoz Alvarez and her body was found on the pavement
of the Santa Teresa-Cananea highway. She had been strangled. She was
twenty-eight and she was dressed in green leggings, a white T-shirt, and pink
tennis shoes. According to the medical examiner, she had been beaten and
whipped: the marks of a wide belt were still visible on her back. She had
worked as a waitress at a cafe in the center of the city. The first to take the
rap was her boyfriend, with whom she often fought, according to some witnesses.
The man's name was Rogelio Reinosa and he worked at the maquiladora Rem&Co.
and didn't have an alibi for the evening Aurora Munoz was kidnapped. He spent a
week in one interrogation session after another. A month later, after he had
already been moved to the Santa Teresa jail, he was released for lack of
evidence. There were no other arrests. According to the eyewitnesses, who had
no idea it was a kidnapping, Aurora Munoz had gotten into a black Peregrine
with two men she seemed to know. Two days after the appearance of the first
August victim, the body of Emilia Escalante Sanjuan, thirty-three, was found,
presenting multiple hematomas over the chest and neck. The body was discovered
at the intersection of Michoacan and General Saavedra, in Colonia Trabajadores.
The medical examiner's report stated that the cause of death was strangulation,
after the victim had been raped countless times. The report of Inspector Angel
Fernandez, who took charge of the case, indicated, on the contrary, that the
cause of death was alcohol poisoning. Emilia Escalante Sanjuan lived in Colonia
Morelos, in the west of the city, and worked at the maquiladora New-Markets.
She had two young children and lived with her mother, whom she had sent for
from
Oaxaca
,
where she was from. She didn't have a husband, although once every two months
she went out to clubs downtown, with friends from work, where she usually drank
and went off with some man. Practically a whore, said the police. A week later
the body of Estrella Ruiz Sandoval, seventeen, turned up next to the Casas
Negras highway. She had been raped and strangled. She was dressed in jeans and
a dark blue blouse. Her arms were tied behind her back. Her body showed no
signs of torture or beating. She had disappeared from home, where she lived
with her parents and siblings, three days before. The case was handled by
Epifanio Galindo and Noe Velasco, of the Santa Teresa police department, to
ease the burden on the judicial police inspectors, who were complaining about
having too much work. One day after Estrella Ruiz Sandoval's body was found,
the body of Monica Posadas, twenty, was discovered in a vacant lot near Calle
Amistad, in Colonia La Preciada. According to the medical examiner, Monica had
been anally and vaginally raped, although traces of semen were also found in
her throat, which led to talk in police circles of a "three-way"
rape. There was one cop, however, who said a full rape meant a rape of all five
orifices. Asked what the other two were, he said the ears. Another cop said
he'd heard of a man from Sinaloa who raped seven ways. That is, the five known
orifices, plus the eyes. And another cop said he'd heard of a man from Mexico
City who did it eight ways, which meant the seven orifices previously
mentioned, call it the seven classics, plus the navel, where the man from
Mexico City would make a small incision with his knife, then stick in his dick,
although to do that, of course, you had to be out of your tree. Anyway, the
story of the "three-way" rape spread and became a favorite among the
Santa Teresa police, acquiring semiofficial status and occasionally cropping up
in reports, interrogations, and off-the-record conversations with the press. In
the case of Monica Posadas, the victim hadn't only been raped "three
ways," but also strangled. The body, which was found half hidden behind
some cardboard boxes, was naked from the waist down. The legs were stained with
blood. So much blood that if seen from a distance, or from a certain height, a
stranger (or an angel, since there was no nearby building from which to look
down) might have said the girl was wearing red tights. Her vagina was torn. Her
vulva and thighs showed clear signs of bites and tears, as if a street dog had gnawed
at her. The inspectors centered their investigation on the family circle and
among the
 
acquaintances
 
of Monica Posadas, who lived with her family
on Calle San Hipolito, about six blocks from the vacant lot where the body was
found. Her mother and stepfather, as well as her older brother, worked at
Overworld, a maquiladora where Monica had worked for three years, after which
she'd left to try her luck at Country&SeaTech. Monica's family came from a
little town in Michoacan and had moved to Santa Teresa ten years ago. At first,
life seemed to get worse instead of better, and Monica's father decided to
cross the border. He was never heard from again and after a while his family
gave him up for dead. Then Monica's mother met a hardworking, responsible man
whom she ended up marrying. Three children were born of this marriage. One
worked at a small boot factory and the other two went to school. Upon being
questioned, it wasn't long before Monica's stepfather began to flagrantly
contradict himself, and in the end, he admitted he was guilty of the murder.
According to his confession, he had loved Monica in secret from the time she
was fifteen. His life since then had been a living hell, he told Inspector Juan
de Dios
Martinez
,
Inspector Ernesto Ortiz Rebolledo, and Inspector Efram Rebolledo, but he had
controlled himself and stayed away
from her, partly because she was his
stepdaughter and partly because her mother was also the mother of his own
children. His account of the day of the crime was vague, full of holes and
forgotten details. In his first statement he said it was late at night. In the
second he said it was early morning, and only he and Monica were in the house
because they were both working the afternoon shift that week.
 
He hid the body in a wardrobe. In my
wardrobe, he told the inspectors, a wardrobe no one touched because it was my
wardrobe and I demanded respect for my things. At night, while the family was
asleep, he wrapped the body in a blanket and left it in the nearest vacant lot.
Asked about the bites and the blood covering Monica's legs, he didn't know what
to answer. He said he had strangled her and that was all he remembered. The
rest had been erased from his memory. Two days after Monica's body was
discovered in the vacant lot on Calle Amistad, the body of another dead woman
appeared on the Santa Teresa-Caborca highway. According to the medical
examiner, the woman was probably between eighteen and twenty-two, although she
might well have been between sixteen and twenty-three. The cause of death, at
least, was clear. She had been shot. One hundred feet from where she was found,
the skeleton of another woman was discovered, half buried in a decumbent
position, still wearing a blue jacket and good-quality leather shoes with a
small heel. The state of the body made it impossible to determine the cause of
death. A week later, when August was nearing an end, the body of Jacqueline
Rios, twenty-five, salesgirl at a drugstore in Colonia Madero, was found next
to the Santa Teresa-Cananea highway. She was dressed in jeans and a light gray
blouse, white tennis shoes, and black underwear. She had been shot in the chest
and the abdomen. She had an apartment with a friend on Calle
Bulgaria
, in Colonia Madero, and both dreamed of
going to live in
California
someday. Found in her bedroom, which she shared with her friend, were clippings
of
Hollywood
actresses and actors and pictures
of places around the world. First we wanted to move to
California
, find decent, well-paying jobs,
and then, once we were settled, see the world on our vacations, said her
friend. Both of them studied English at a private academy in Colonia Madero.
The case remained unsolved.