Journalist and fact-checker, The New Yorker
The New Yorker, April 2025. An MS-13 leader knew key details of a secret deal that his gang allegedly made with the Salvadoran President—then the White House put him on a flight to El Salvador. By now, the images of Donald Trump’s March 15th flights to El Salvador are all too familiar: shackled Venezuelans being... Continue Reading →
The Dial, October 2024. ✺ On May 4, 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris stood on a podium at the Washington Conference on the Americas and took aim at the government of El Salvador, headed by President Nayib Bukele. Just three days before the conference, he — along with the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, controlled... Continue Reading →
Drilled and Contracorriente, October 2024. With Fernando Silva. Jennifer Ávila contributed reporting; photos by Fernando Destephen. Disponible en español. Honduran environmentalist Juan López had a priestly calm. His steady gaze and his way of speaking, polite but direct, were notable whether he was philosophizing with friends or leading a protest. Although he knew well the... Continue Reading →
The New Yorker, April 2024. On the afternoon of February 4th, as Salvadorans were voting in Presidential and legislative elections, a fifty-seven-year-old writer named Carlos Bucio Borja walked into a polling place near his home in the capital and began to read the constitution aloud. The sitting President, Nayib Bukele, was seeking a second consecutive mandate, which legal... Continue Reading →
Febrero 2024. Queridos lectores, Este es un post un poco distinto. No es un artículo, sino una carta. Les quiero compartir algo que hemos construido con mis queridas colegas de Contracorriente: un portal de documentos y análisis de los juicios estadounidenses contra el narcoestado hondureño. Esté donde esté usted en este momento, a lo mejor... Continue Reading →
The New Republic, Dec 2023. Several thousand people crowded near the entrance to the national gymnasium of El Salvador at dusk on November 15, waiting to take their seats for the preliminary round of the 2023 Miss Universe pageant. From within the throng, one group screamed the name of a country in unison, prompting rivals... Continue Reading →
Foreign Policy, November 2023. As part of the OCCRP project, "The Dictators' Bank." El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, speaks during a joint news conference with the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson in San Salvador on May 26, 2020. YURI CORTEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES One September morning three years ago, the U.S. Senate Committee on... Continue Reading →
CLIP and Contracorriente, February 2022. With Jennifer Ávila and María Teresa Ronderos. El artículo original se encuentra después de la traducción al inglés. Ilustración: Candy Carvajal. The following is a translation of the original Spanish. Two non-profits, two diplomats, and the circle around the former Honduran president. As detained former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández... Continue Reading →
The New Yorker, May 2021. Film by Erin Semine Kökdil. The opening scene of the film “Desde Que Llegaste, Mi Corazón Dejó de Pertenecerme” (“Since You Arrived, My Heart Stopped Belonging to Me”) is shot through the windshield of a bus barrelling through fog, wipers swiping to no avail. We cannot discern what doom—or what... Continue Reading →
The New Yorker, April 2021. Film by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurre. On a recent Thursday afternoon, Marisela and Ely Ortiz, a middle-aged couple, went to a Costco in Temecula, California, to buy crates of bread and bottled water, a weekend’s worth of nourishment for twenty-five volunteers who would spend two days walking in extreme... Continue Reading →
Danielle Mackey 