About

I work in both U.S. and Central American media. I’m currently based in New York, on staff at The New Yorker, after living mostly in El Salvador from 2008 until 2021 as a freelance investigative, longform reporter. I still write as an independent journalist, and I sit on the editorial board of Contracorriente.

I’ve written about:

Mothers using drones to find disappeared children in Mexico   *    the judge who took down organized crime in Colombia, then moved to Guatemala to do the same   *   a particularly good-humored Venezuelan family living in exile in Panama   *   queer poetry skewering the pan-American carceral state   *   decolonial feminism under Nayib Bukele in El Salvador   *   the impact of U.S. immigration policy on Central American teenagers, families and queer people   *   a private-city, libertarian economic experiment in Honduras   *   union organizing in Central America   *   a Salvadoran writer fleeing death threats after publishing a historical novel   *   serendipity in rural Colombia   *   graffiti artists tagging across gang borders in San Salvador   *   and more.

I’ve investigated:

U.S.-linked financing for Bukele’s Bitcoin scheme in El Salvador  *  How the largest steel company in the U.S. secretly funded a Honduran miner accused of corruption — and the local communities fighting back   *   Twitter troll farms in Ecuador and Guatemala   *   the assassination of indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres   *   election fraud and narco-deforestation in Honduras   *   and more.

I’ve pursued long-term projects about:

Abusive policing, gangs and violence prevention in El Salvador and in U.S. foreign policy, supported by various press organizations, like the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) and the International Women’s Media Foundation.

The corruption — whether corporate, state-security or political — rooted in the Honduran drug trade, with my colleagues at Contracorriente. We’ve been supported by the FIJ, Columbia University’s Center for Mexico and Central America, and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística.

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In the past, I’ve taught at the journalism school at CUNY Lehman College, among other media positions. I love animals and books and people with their stories, and have somehow ended up with a side career as a wedding officiant for dear friends.

Contact me: dmack08@gmail.com or danielle_mackey@newyorker.com, or write for Signal number. Résumé here. I don’t have Twitter — but I’ve been mercilessly, successfully peer-pressured into an Instagram.