Journalist and fact-checker, The New Yorker
World Politics Review, Feb 2018. Editor’s Note: In July 2019, this story received an Honorable Mention by the National Press Club for the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, which recognizes excellence in reporting on diplomatic and foreign policy issues. Late one morning in the fall of 2016, police officers handcuffed a group of middle... Continue Reading →
The Intercept, December 2017. On the night of December 2, 2017, a Honduran woman in the rural province of Olancho was protesting what she saw as a stolen election. The woman, eight months pregnant, stood in the streets in violation of a national curfew, and she screamed alongside a rebellious multitude, “Fuera JOH!” (“Out JOH!”), referring... Continue Reading →
The Intercept, November 2017. With Cora Currier. The State Department announced Wednesday evening the abrupt cancellation of a program that gave youth fleeing violence in Central America the chance to apply for asylum and join their families in the United States. While the Trump administration had already narrowed the scope of the Obama-era initiative and indicated it would... Continue Reading →
Equal Times, June 2017. En español, français. The municipality of Santo Tomas, El Salvador, absorbs the impacts of the maquila industry like a human body. Its daily routine ebbs and flows with the textile production schedule like blood through veins. At 06:00, the 37 bus bulges with women from Santo Tomas en route to work in the maquila zones of... Continue Reading →
Huck Magazine, May 2017. Photos by Fred Ramos. Ivonne Reyes steps out of the house she rents near central San Salvador. The dark-haired 25-year-old flags down the route 2C bus, hops on and holds tight as it careens around heavy traffic, street vendors and wild dogs. When the vehicle slides to a stop in the... Continue Reading →
The Intercept, May 2017. See accompanying film by Leighton Akio Woodhouse and Pedro Armando Aparicio here. Thousands of miles from his home and family, Jose Escobar lives in a small rural community in La Unión, El Salvador, amid fields of sugar cane and corn, bordered by the Chaparrastique volcano and the Gulf of Fonseca. Escobar,... Continue Reading →
The Huffington Post, January 2017. The US promised more support for a refugee crisis close to home. Why has its program, the PTA, helped just one family in nearly six months? SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – The garage of a one-story, cinder-block building has been converted into a makeshift waiting room. Six families sit... Continue Reading →
The Intercept, April 2016. An interview with the sole witness of the murder of Berta Cáceres. Leer en español abajo. Gustavo Castro was the sole witness to the murder on March 3 of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres, the co-founder of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Movements of Honduras (COPINH). Castro, the director of Other Worlds,... Continue Reading →
The Establishment, April 2016. In the U.S. media, Central America and Mexico mostly appear as places overpowered by corruption and skyrocketing murder rates. Violence is a defining characteristic of life here, especially for young people—but so is creativity, and art. The Establishment recently caught up with two hip-hop artists who use music to engage in a public... Continue Reading →
The Intercept, March 2016. The murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres. Early in the morning on March 3, in La Esperanza, Honduras, unidentified men broke into the home of the environmental activist Berta Cáceres and murdered her. Cáceres was the cofounder of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Movements of Honduras (COPINH) and the 2015... Continue Reading →
Danielle Mackey 