June 2020, available here. From the book, Faces of Assassination, published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. When he was a teenager, Miguel Ángel Rivera joined his older brother, Marcelo, to do community work in their home town of San Isidro in the department of Cabañas, El Salvador. In the early 1990s, they would... Continue Reading →
Risks of union organizing in Honduras and El Salvador
Equal Times, March 2020. En español, français. Photographs by Martín Cálix. On an average day, Joel Almendares is counselling Honduran middle and high school students about how to excel in school and plan their futures. But he is also fighting off worries about violent attacks on himself and his unionised colleagues. Almendares is secretary general... Continue Reading →
The Criminal Age // Tiempo de crímenes
Contracorriente, Oct 2019. En español aquí. With Jennifer Ávila. A trial in New York reveals narco control in Honduras *This article has been amended since its original publication to reflect changing news. Tony Hernández is a former congressman from Honduras' ruling National Party and the brother of the sitting president. Since 2004, Tony Hernández has... Continue Reading →
Historic shift in U.S. policy divides federal agencies and Trump administration over how to address gang violence
The Intercept, October 2018, supported by the International Women's Media Foundation. With Cora Currier. Leia em português. Oswaldo joined the Salvadoran gang Barrio 18 when he was 14 years old. By the time he was in his early 20s, he wanted out — and luckily, gang leaders gave him permission to leave. But they warned... Continue Reading →
Justice, from Colombia to Central America
The Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2018. A brick wall, the first layer of the barrier, encircles most of a city block on an unassuming street in Guatemala City. On the other side is a checkpoint with metal detectors like airport security. Next comes a winding walk flanked by two security guards, and then,... Continue Reading →
The Rise of the Net Center: Anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala vs. an army of trolls
The Intercept, April 2018, supported by the International Women's Media Foundation. With Cora Currier. En Español aquí. At 6:02 A.M. on August 27, 2017, the president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, uploaded a video statement to Twitter declaring the former Colombian judge Iván Velásquez a persona non grata and ordering his expulsion from the country. Velásquez is investigating corruption... Continue Reading →
El Salvador’s “iron fist” crackdown on gangs: A lethal policy with US origins
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 →
Behind the 2017 Honduran election chaos: Narco-ranchers and uncouth political alliances
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 →
Drugs, Dams and Power
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 →
Charter Cities: A dangerous U.S. economic experiment in Honduras
The New Republic, December 2014. It’s lunchtime at Maritza Grande’s oceanside restaurant in the Fonseca Gulf of Honduras. She scurries from the kitchen, where she is frying fish and plantains and chopping lettuce, to the bar, where she pries caps off soda bottles. Teenage boys sit at the restaurant’s picnic tables, drinking cokes and listening... Continue Reading →