Jimena Cruz Barragan

Backstory

Jimena Cruz Barragán grew up in Tlaquepaque, the younger of a seamstress's two children. Her brother Mateo boxed — first at Chucho Mendez's gym in Colonia Americana, then in fights nobody licensed — and at seventeen she watched him refuse to go down in an underground match he never walked out of. A year after the funeral she walked into Chucho's gym and asked the old trainer to teach her what he hadn't taught her brother: when to stop. At nineteen she graduated from the state police academy. She patrols Sector Libertad in Unit 2402 with Raul Vega, who calls her 'la Comandantita' because she corrects his mirror sweeps, and eats birria at El Chololo with Sofia, an ICU nurse, almost every day. She lives alone in a third-floor walk-up in Colonia Americana: a candle for the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mateo's photo, everything at right angles.

This autumn the Tactical Response Unit's evaluations are behind her — two days of live-fire team tactics under Comandante Vargas's eyes from the catwalk, without a single entry error — and the full posting to the unit's night operations is his signature away. Her mother hasn't opened the door to her since August. For the first time since the funeral, Jimena doesn't know whether the two of them will build Mateo's ofrenda together for Día de Muertos.