The heat at the “La Culebra” Training Camp, on the outskirts of Hermosillo, wasn’t just a temperature: it was a palpable pressure that clung to your body and pressed you against the dry earth. By six in the morning, the sun was already beating down on the concrete barracks, and the air smelled of dust, stale sweat, and diesel. Nothing grew there except discipline… and fear.
I was Private Jessica Morales, twenty-six years old, from a forgotten town in Zacatecas, supposedly without education or a future. I adjusted my boots with calculated clumsiness, letting my hands look unsteady, always a second slower than everyone else’s. My hair was pulled back in a regulation bun, but slightly messy, like someone who still doesn’t understand military rigidity.
“Hurry up, Jess,” whispered Lucía Hernández, my bunkmate, a nineteen-year-old girl from Oaxaca. “The sergeant is in a bad mood today.”
“I’m coming…” I replied, feigning anxiety.
Inside, Lieutenant Colonel Rebeca Torres, an intelligence officer in the Mexican Army with covert operations in Central America and joint missions with international forces, observed everything with clinical detachment. No one at that base knew that the clumsy recruit running last could shut down a military installation with a single encrypted call to SEDENA (the Mexican Ministry of National Defense).
My mission was clear and brutal: to become the perfect victim.
For six weeks, I had lived like Jessica. I had studied the files of soldiers who had dropped out of basic training, imitated their fears, their hunched posture, their learned silence. I had buried my pride—that Mexican pride that compels you to endure—because here I had to die so that the truth could emerge alive.
Rumors had reached offices in Lomas de Sotelo, in Mexico City: abuses, illegal punishments, extortion disguised as “fines,” systematic humiliations. But the official reports were always clean. Fear is an excellent eraser.
They needed someone invisible.
Someone like “the poor girl from Zacatecas.”
First Sergeant Cárdenas patrolled the formation like a ranch owner. At thirty-eight, his strong body concealed a mind corroded by power. His eyes searched for weakness like a vulture.
“Attention!” he shouted.
He stopped in front of me.
“Morales,” he spat. “What the hell is this?”
He pointed at my boots, perfectly clean.
“They’re my boots, Sergeant,” I replied, looking straight ahead.
“Your boots?” he laughed. “Those things aren’t even fit to walk on this homeland. Is this how they defend the nation in Zacatecas? Or do they only know how to ask for government handouts over there?”
The group tensed.
“Get down! Twenty push-ups! And thank the floor for putting up with you!”
I obeyed. The concrete burned. I didn’t feel tired, I felt rage. Not for myself, but for what he represented: the corruption of the uniform.
Days later, he made me his target. He sent me to clean latrines with a toothbrush. He punished the entire section for my “mistakes.” He tried to isolate me. Some hesitated… until they understood that I was just the excuse.
“Your country doesn’t need you,” he told me one afternoon.
That phrase hurt because it was the same one he had repeated to others before me.
On Friday, the uniform inspection arrived. My uniform was spotless. There was no reason.
Cárdenas stood behind me.
“Your hair,” he said.
“Follow the regulations, Sergeant.”
That was the trigger.
“I am the regulations!” he roared. “Hold her back!”
Two soldiers grabbed my arms, trembling. I couldn’t resist. Cárdenas pulled out an electric clipper. The whirring cut through the silence of the courtyard.
The first pass was a shock. Strands of hair fell to the dusty ground. I didn’t cry. I looked at the Mexican flag waving in the brutal sun. I thought of all the women who had endured it before me.
“Now you look like a soldier,” he mocked.
When he finished, they let me go. I touched my head: jagged cuts, exposed skin.
“Pick up your trash and get out.”
I gathered a strand of hair. I looked him in the eye.
“You’re going to regret this, Sergeant.”
“I wish I had done it sooner,” he replied.
That night I dialed the emergency number.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Rebeca Torres. Code red in La Culebra. I request immediate intervention.”
At eight o’clock the next morning, Cougar helicopters landed, kicking up clouds of dust. General Patricia Herrera, from the Mexican Army’s high command, descended accompanied by the Military Police.
“Are you in charge of this unit?” she asked Cárdenas.
“Yes, General…”
“And of this recruit?”
“Disciplinary measure…”
“Private Morales, to the front.”
I took a step forward.
“Your undercover mission ends now,” the general announced. “Before you is not a recruit, but Lieutenant Colonel Rebeca Torres.”
Cárdenas’s face crumbled.
“Agents, proceed,” I ordered.
The sound of handcuffs clicking shut was the clearest sound in the desert.
Month
Later, I returned to Training Camp “La Culebra.” The heat was still relentless; the Sonoran sun hadn’t learned to be forgiving of anyone. But something was different. The air was lighter. There was no fear hidden in their eyes, no tense silences in the ranks.
The new officers walked among the soldiers with firmness and respect. Lucía and Miguel, aho
My short hair was beginning to grow back. I didn’t wear it
I looked at the Mexican flag waving against the blue sky, and I understood that it had all been worth it. Every insult, every unjust punishment, every strand of hair that fell to the desert floor.
Because that day something became clear that no one at that base would ever forget: