Futuro Investigators Futuro in Bastia.

We should mention that parts of this story might be disturbing for some of our listeners.

It is July of two thousand and seven in the capital of El Salvador.

A twenty four year old woman named Deodora Basquez is at work alone at the end of the day.

She's nine months pregnant and she's an active labor.

Without thinking, Deodora grabs the phone and dials nine one one.

Someone answers.

Deodora explains her situation to the operator.

She needs an ambulance.

Hurry, let's plicata embarrassta.

She waits for help to arrive, but there is no ambulance and the pain is getting worse.

No you go, Deo Dora calls nine one one a couple of more times, but.

Nothing.

She waits all alone in labor.

Then she gets the urge to use the restroom.

When she gets there, the lights don't work in the dark stall.

Theodora begins to pull down her underwear ian and when her hands reach her knees, she feels something from inside of her dropped, and then everything goes black.

Yes momento.

Deo Dora loses consciousness.

She's hemorrhaging now and blood begins to pool beneath.

Her Mayo noo.

She can't remember if it was five minutes or an hour.

All she knows is that while unconscious, someone finally arrives.

But it's not the paramedics and it's not an ambulance.

It's the police and a federal forensic team.

Me So when the police arrive, you are covered in blood and your daughter as well.

And the police arrive and the first thing they do is to put handcuffs on You see, in the haze of her consciousness, she doesn't understand what's happening.

Where are they taking her?

And where is her baby?

Majev Ami Deodora would soon find out she'd been arrested for what authorities assumed was an abortion and the killing of her own baby.

What can a meu with anam from Fuduro Media, It's Latino Usa.

I'm Marieno Hosa Today producer Monica Morales Garcia, and I traveled to El Salvador, a country with one of the strictest abortion laws in the world.

We meet people supporting the criminalization of abortion and others who have built a movement against it.

Through interviews, documents, and archival materials, Our Investigation paints a clear and disturbing picture of the women who suffer most when a country stretches the definition of abortion to include miscarriages and stillbirds and then bans them all without exceptions.

Earlier this year, Monica and I traveled to San Salvador, which is the capital of El Salvador.

It's a special trip for both of us.

Last time I was here was twenty five years ago on a reporting trip.

I'm Maria Inojsa is still a country that is wounded and bleeding, and the women here still long to be safe and live in peace.

And it's my first time here in the country.

My family fled back in the eighties before I was born, so what I know about this place comes from sad stories passed down to me.

But Landing, now, all right, I'm going to popular for I knew I would bring back stories of my own.

We came to speak with women who have been incarcerated for what doctors here called obstetric emergencies, things like a miscarriage or not beverdida, or going into labor alone, hemorrhaging, or having a still birth.

Emergencies that can have extreme consequences in a country under a total abortion ban.

And though having a miscarriage or a still birth is not technically illegal, here, medical professionals, police and judges avoid making distinctions to steer clear of criminal prosecution for being involved in what the government might define as an abortion.

What does that look like in practice?

Well, reports show doctors and nurses can end up calling the police when women are having a miscarriage.

Let that sink in.

But before we get to our destination, let's just take a moment for some historical contexts.

Though women have always been politically active in El Salvador, there have been high highs and low lows.

Because you see, in the late nineteen eighties and early nineties, the radical feminist movement here was.

Boomi Salo Sisicamnistan.

It's a period that coincided with the country's twelve year civil war.

But by the millennium the movement was waning, and it was during that low period of feminism when abortion laws got.

Stricter de concepts.

It wouldn't take long for advocates on the left to notice that women were being incarcerated because of stillbert's and miscarriages, and once again the feminist movement began to grow.

I'll never forget arriving in nineteen eighty nine during the offensive of the leftist gorillas, and we were here to report after the war, and now I'm back years after that.

It'sachi.

We make our first stop at the offices of a feminist collective.

Their offices include the AGROUPACNALI translated it's the Citizens Group for the deep Penalization of abortion.

They fight to get women at prison and they're working to change the abortion landscape in Elsa, Vador altogether.

The offices of the feminist collective are in a residential part of the city.

It's a white, two story house with large white gates wrapped in barbed wire.

There's an indoor courtyard that looks out to the Salvadoran sky.

Okay, so they have writing on the wall.

It says we build the feminist movement.

The building also hosts a feminist radio station and lawyer's offices.

We sit down and wait to meet with Margarita, a young woman who was incarcerated after unintentionally delivering her baby in a toilet.

She was released in twenty twenty three.

Berta Mango Marguerite is thirty one.

She has brown hair that goes past her waist.

She's wearing a black kneelength skirt and a white T shirt with a big Chanel logo.

She's very curly and sweet.

You would never guess that she spent almost a decade in prison.

It's usque you were twenty years old.

Oh my god.

Back in twenty thirteen, Margherita was dating an older guy.

She was convinced he was the love of her life.

But a couple of months in she got pregnant and as soon as she told him, he disappeared.

Ef Margherita says, he's a coward.

You didn't even say anything, and one day he just left.

So for months, says her belly grew.

Her neighbors from a small rural town would side eye her color seen in midwensa shameless But this was her first pregnancy, so it didn't matter what people said.

She was going to be a mother and she was going to enjoy it, Sola.

And when she got to eight months, she was feeling great.

She was about to meet her baby until a very hot day in September twenty thirteen.

Butono senti dolor.

She's at home.

She goes to the bathroom, which is outdoors basically a latrine with a septic tank that is about ten feet deep is Margherita pushes and feels a.

Drop a stica.

So you give birth in the latrine and the umbilical cord detached, which means that you're now bleeding.

See her baby girl had just been born and fallen into the septic tank.

Her mom calls the police for help.

In Graciados.

De la Fos Sectica.

The police arrive and are able to get the baby out of the tank.

Margharita's baby is alive yo, But.

Just like in the story of Deal who you heard from at the start of the show, the police assume the worst that Margharita had given birth and thrown her baby in the toilet in an attempt to kill her own newborn.

The next thing Margharita remembers is waking up in the hospital, handcuffed, accused of trying to murder her baby.

El Salvador has prosecuted more than one hundred and eighty women over the past two decades for having obstetric emergencies, which the government labeled abortion and homicide.

According to the Feminist Collective they've helped at least seventy three women regain their freedom.

Margarita is one of them.

All the women that we have represented and we are representing right now is women from poor origins.

That's the reality of the poor woman here in the Savador.

This is at Castellano, a social worker at the Feminist Collective where we met Margarita.

Is more like sending a message from the system that they do not want anyone getting an abortion, even though it's a miscarriage.

They don't care.

You're going to go to jail.

But why just poor women?

That's how the system works.

Unfortunately, here in the Savador, the criminalized poverty a lot here in the country.

All the women are poor, obviously that they are criminalized.

Artruau and others at the Citizens Organization have worked to prove that women who are incarcerated for unintentionally losing their babies, they're not criminals.

They're not at fault for not perfectly completing their pregnancies.

In fact, they are victims of physically and emotionally painful medical emergencies, and instead of getting help, they get punished by the system.

If you don't have access to education, if you don't have access to a paid job.

If you are in the rural side of the country, then you will get criminalized for miscarrying.

If you can pay it an abortion, you will go to another country to make it happen.

You avoid the law.

If you have a miscarriage and you are from a family that can pay for private doctors, they won't call the police.

But if you go to a public system, they will call the police.

Even though that they don't have to call the police, they will do.

It, and the doctor or the nurse will call the police because they're afraid that if they don't, they could end up in prison.

Yes, exactly.

By the time Margharita began her prison sentence, there was already a feminist movement in the making to protect and defend women in her situation.

So because of the activists, Margharita's defense was successful.

Her thirty year sentence was reduced to nine years and nine months.

She was released in twenty twenty three.

But despite being out for two years, Margharita has yet to see or meet her twelve year old daughter, the baby who was born in the latrine.

Yes, I asked Margharita if her daughter is aware that her mother is trying to meet her.

Margharita says people have turned her daughter against her.

Who took your daughter from you?

With el papa?

Mm hmm, i'l go in no memopa.

I was not expecting that.

The man who left her, the coward as she called him, he took her daughter and then moved out of the country.

But Margharita says she'll never stop trying to get her back.

Now the Feminist Collective is working to reconnect them, but it hasn't been easy.

Margherita won't lose hope though, I said oka.

Reuniting with her daughter is her constant prayer to God.

She says, wherever her daughter is, she will look for her.

The woman here, their resistant the system is something that you need to be proud obviously, and you need to admire because they're trying to make a change that is not welcoming on society.

But they're struggling to make it and they're advancing in their fight.

We're going to take a break and when we come back what it means for El Salvador to recognize life from the moment of conception.

Changing the law for a Fortunately, there is not much hope.

Stay with US notes, Hey, we're back.

You just heard the stories of Theo and Margarita to women who have been victimized and incarcerated because of Al Salvador's total abortion ban.

Latino USA producer Monta Moreles Garcia and I are going to get back now to Theo's story, but before that, the backstory of how and why El Salvador ended up with one of the world's strictest abortion bands.

In nineteen ninety seven, El Salvador made all abortions illegal with no exceptions.

It was a big story and it was covered on the Salvadoran news show in Trevista Aldia.

Back in the nineties, laf.

It didn't matter if a pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, and it didn't matter if the woman's life was in danger.

As we heard from Marduro at the Feminist Collective, the law in Al Salvador doesn't differentiate between abortion, a miscarriage, stillbirth, or any useterric emergency.

Any termination of pregnancy could make you a criminal and could lead to an aggravated homicide charge with up to fifty years in prison.

Yeah fifty.

A key actor in El Salvador's criminalization of miscarriages is Julia Regina de cardinal.

Ce Saclino, Peruento, no emperasos como pasa and La Borto.

She's one of the most influential anti abortion advocates in the country and she believes personhood begins at.

Conception okastra constitucioso man the moment concept.

Julia Rehina's organization is called ci A Lavida or Yes to Life, and thanks in part to her, the Salvadoran Constitution was amended in nineteen ninety nine to recognize the quote right to life from the moment of conception.

It's an addition to the Salvadoran Constitution that solidified the no exceptions ban from the previous year.

Julia Rahina is a force in the anti abortion movement here, so of course we needed to speak with her, but her organization declined our in person interview request, saying we would be biased against them.

That didn't stop us from taking a chance and cold calling her.

You won't hear Julia Rahina during our phone call because we didn't receive permission to record it.

Julia began her career as a singer, writing songs like Gracies Bornibida.

Yeah, thats.

A song about a mother who gives up her child for adoption so they could both have a better life.

She then founded that organization that pushed to amend the Salvadoran constitution.

As abortion became more and more politicized in the nineteen nineties, her organization narrowed its focus on abortion and eventually became the most prominent anti abortion group in El Salvador.

During our very brief chat, Uya Rahina told me that she considers herself an activist who defends life.

She told me she's not anti anything, She's pro pro woman and pro baby.

The call lasted about seven minutes, and halfway through Rahina questioned my use of the term obstetric emergencies.

I asked if we could sit down and talk more in person, because I wanted to hear her point of view in order to understand this story fully.

But Huya Rahina didn't want to meet with us.

Let's se Julia Rhina's influence and her anti abortion views are everywhere.

Maria and I heard it for ourselves from several regular Salvadorans throughout the city, like an older woman who firmly stated that women have no right to end a pregnancy.

Do you believe a woman should have the right to choose an abortion?

A young man whose mother was raped and here I am, he says.

Yotepo Testimona Mia mama fa your lave, Yeah, yes, so yah.

And another woman who never told her son he was the product of rape.

You were raped, ellosal.

But Huya Rahena's influence doesn't stop there.

In twenty thirteen, a pregnant woman with lupus lead it to the government for a life saving abortion, and she was denied.

The woman named Beatrice is carrying a twenty six year old fetus missing large parts of the brain and skull.

Urja Rechina praised that Salvadoran ruling, saying that quote abortion is a cruel and bloody murder in which not only does the child die, but the mother is hurt physically and mentally end quote.

Months later, Biatris gave birth by emergency sea section.

The fetus died five hours after birth.

Later, this high profile case Biatris Versus and Salvador, made it to the Inter American Court of Human Rights, and the international court determined, among other things, that El Salvador failed to guarantee Biatris's human rights.

But the stories we've told you Thales and Margaritas, they didn't want to terminate their pregnancies.

There are poor women with very little access to healthcare, and they've lost their babies because of an obstetric emergency, and instead of getting the medical care they needed, the government punished them, accused them of murder, and refused to believe women.

There are no official numbers on how many women are in prison for obstetric emergencies that are labeled as abortions and homicides.

What we do know is that lawyers, feminists, and women who have spent their time incarcerated all suspect that there is a massive undercount.

We reached out to the government of Elsavadad for a comment to this story, but we never heard back.

On our second day in Elsalvdor Monica and I went to La Casa de Muhire's leave.

It is the house of Freedomdal is the woman who was at work when she went into labor alone and then spent a decade in prison.

Now she's an activist and an organizer at this house, which is an acute middle class neighborhood in San Salvador.

Dal now runs her own recovery house to support formerly incarcerated women just like her.

The women come here to get therapy, to connect with jobs, and to learn things like how to send an email.

No task is too big or too small.

Dale is beaming as she greets.

Us as we sap into the recovery house.

But it's big tiles and mahogany molding that introduces us to Zulema, who's in the kitchen.

Suleima is making a cad and well, the smell of that beef stew is reaching every corner of the house.

I mean, Suleima is one of the founding members of this place.

And she joke said she's also the treasurer, the theater director, the dance teacher, and the basketball coach.

She does it all.

Mama Suleima spent years in prison.

Now she lives at this recovery house with her eleven year old daughter, Jimena, along with Jimena's pet rabbit bugs Bunny.

Sulema says is leave it is has given her life autonomy.

We keep walking to the lush green backyard with Deal, where we settle under the shaded patio that worded off the Salvador and heat birds car and crow well bugs Bunny the pet rabbit roams around the yard.

And here Dale continues her story.

What happened, in fact, after she fainted in that dark toilet stall, all alone, covered in blood, the moment when the police assumed and labeled her a murderer.

Yea, that's where the torture began, she says.

That night, Dale, barely conscious, remembers not being taken to the hospital right away.

She could hear the officers arguing about which holding cell they were going to take her to.

Ala Bartolina de Centennario, Ianto says, Mama.

When they got her to the cell, the police officers handcuffed her.

Jo then.

I see Theo gets up.

From her seat to show us how she pushes her chair behind her, wrists intertwined and stretches her arms way over.

Her head, jokes Colgar.

They hung her from the highest point, her toes barely touching the floor, blood pulling underneath hersa marine.

She thought she would die in that holding cell, CARU.

From that point on, all she remembers is flashes of time police saying it was better if she died in the hospital where she had been taken now Yo, And then all she saw was bright.

Whitea the Camaro.

Peranda journalists, TV cameras, microphones all surrounded her.

Hospital bed Para ke Matasui.

They wanted to get their photo of the woman who had just been arrested for killing her child, just in time for the midday news, and that is how Theo learned that her little girl didn't make it.

Memorio Dietmundosima.

I felt like I had died, like the world had fallen on top of me, and I couldn't move.

Pedro Es.

Deo was sentenced to thirty years in prison for losing her baby when she went into labor alone with no medical assistance, after her repeated calls to nine one one for help went unanswered.

Until this day, no one knows why or when or how Dale's baby girl died.

Those story is the story of so many other women of her generation in Elsa, Vada.

They grew up in a rural part of the country in the nineties, when the country was coming out of a civil war.

The unemployment rate among those living at the national poverty line was sixty percent, with over half of that population earning less than two dollars a day, and it was common for children to drop out of school and help support their families.

So that's exactly what they had to do.

She was twelve years old when she took a job as a domestic worker taking care of children not much younger than.

Her Mirmanham Jesa and Cassano john Us.

She was scared of her fate as a teenager if she stayed under her parents' roof, and most likely would mean an early marriage, a husband and children to take care of, the same path her sisters and her mother had followed.

Perro Jomua Cassa me Mimi Bao.

Says, that's how Salvador and girls are raised.

Their priorities are God, husband and children in that order, and a woman's domain they're taught is in the home.

Deo's mother was a prime example of that.

She had been a wife since she was fourteen years old.

Mimama Paso beentice Hana de suvida in trim Barasada ilando Latansia.

Theyll did the math one time and realized that her mother had spent twenty six years of her life pregnant or nursing, from ages fifteen all the way to forty one.

Yeah, I said, I said, The tears up and she tells us her mother's story.

You Stodia, what choice did her mother have as a girl.

That's what happens to girls who come from poor families like there, like her sisters, her mother, in a country where a woman's worth is all wrapped up in motherhood and being a wife and being of service, life can just happen to you without you having any control.

When we come back, what happens to Theo in prison and how she became the face of an international campaign to free incarcerated Salvadoran women.

Somebody stay with us, not bayes welcome back.

Before the Breakdale invited me and producer Monica Morales Garcia into La Casa de Muhies Libes, the recovery house in al Salvador for women who have been released from prison after having a miscarriage or complications giving birth.

They are in a country with extremely strict abortion rules and where the mere definition of an abortion is stretched beyond its meaning.

We're going to go back now to Theo's place, the recovery house that she runs in the capitol.

When you end up in prison, what happens Andre depression gaze.

The first three years in prison, Dale fell into a deep depressions.

She just couldn't bear the thought of her baby girl being gone.

Remember, she never even got a chance to see her baby ever.

It all felt so surreal.

In prison, there was the target of beatings by fellow female inmates when they found out that she had been charged with killing her baby, despite the fact that she hadn't done so.

In prison, the social hierarchy of inmates reflects the anti abortion Culturequestro massa matador, Yes, so you can be a murderer or kidnapper and it doesn't matter.

Tells us that if a woman comes in and the rest of the prisoners find out that she had been accused of murdering her baby, she would then be beaten, robbed, and spit on her face.

The physical and verbal abuse got so bad that she was put in solitary confinement for three months.

Deal was then transferred to a different part of the prison where she was actually able to take classes critical thinking, problem solving, the Steve rus So self love classes, multiple classes in the arts, dancing.

And then on a random day in twenty thirteen, five years into her sentence, she was asked to meet with a lawyer in a private room.

There were sixteen other women in the room inside the prison.

They knew some of them.

Why are you in prison, the lawyer asked, unadro, drugs, robbery, homicide ISAA.

None of them said that they were in prison because the government had accused them of homicide, because they had an obstetric emergency.

The lawyer then looked at all seventeen women and he said, Oh, this.

Is tanaqui purun casore laciondo laborto.

You're all here because of a connection to abortion, and this meeting, theo says, would change the course of her life.

The lawyer they met with was working with that citizens Group for the Deep Penalization of Abortion.

We met them at the feminist collective that we visited earlier in the story.

Since two thousand and nine, they had been working a free a handful of women who had been imprisoned, and sometimes it worked, but other times the process took so long that by the time they won appeals, the women had finished serving their sentences.

So this time the lawyer said they would try a different strategy, one that involved those seventeen women at that first meeting.

The campaign was called Lassiete or the Seventeen, and it took over the debate around the country and internationally, even producing songs.

Vivasi Lavarma in fier No boys sing Majo rason ni vestigason.

Maze, songs that said I scream, I scream, I scream for them, where is the crime?

The Feminist Collective and other international organizations now requested the pardon of the seventeen women.

Seventeen women who had been wrongfully incarcerated between nineteen ninety nine and twenty eleven and convicted to up to forty years in prison for reporting an obstetric emergency, a miscarriage or a still birth to the police.

The group lasd siate would gain national and then international attention and deo she would become the face of Las d SI in the national campaign to set them free.

This is a distress signal from Amnesty International.

Please help.

My sister's name is Theodora Fasquez.

The government of El.

Salvador has sentenced her to thirty years for having a miscarriage.

It took four years, but in twenty seventeen, Afterdale had served a third of her thirty year sentence, the feminist organizations brought her case before a Salvadoran judge.

Their request Belle's freedom and a declaration of her innocence.

Little number.

Surrounded by media, Dale was brought to the court by two masked guards, one on each side.

She wore a leopard print top jeans, and her wrists were handcuffed in front of her.

In the courtroom, women from different feminist organizations cheered her on.

She smiled and hugged some of them before she sat down to make her case to the judge.

Mon milverta can make concier milvertin bourquet so innocente fort familiato.

Deodora pleaded for her freedom, but it didn't work.

The whole.

Met senate.

The judge rejected her plea and sent the back to prison.

That felt like she had been sentenced all over again until about a month later.

Pres.

After a holiday recess, the judge came back.

For Post and Libert.

And decided to set their free ju.

The day she was real least everyone who supported her was there, the feminist organizations, journalists, her own familyo Dell was ready for a new start.

She had big ideas.

She wanted to help other women just like her, and that's why she helped build the recovery house called Muhes LIBZ free women, where women like her can find a safe place after prisono ilodramas she was going to become a feminist activist herself, part of that long tradition of feminismo Salvo.

Juna moher tivista feminista.

And since that day that there was released, she hasn't stopped and doesn't have plans to.

Today, El Salvador maintains its total abortion ban with no exceptions.

Despite international bodies like the Inter American Commission on Human Rights warning of human rights violations, its recommendations have had zero effects so far.

The same goes for the feminist collective's constant legal battles against the state.

And Salvadoran President Nai Bukele.

He shows no signs of changing these harsh abortion laws.

In a Univision interview in twenty twenty four with journalist Jorge Ramos, Bukele acknowledged the women of LASiS.

In that interview, Bukele almost admits, keyword almost, that Lassie may have been unfairly incarcerated.

Clos's translation to what the president said is that the women were persecuted and that the country needs to start looking at the real problems it has pass but Buke ended by reaffirming that he remains against abortion.

The Savadoran feminists we spoke with, like Mariana Moira, say they don't expect Elsa Vada to change its anti abortion laws for as long as Bucele is in charge.

What is the interest of this politic of denying due process to women in obstetric emergencies.

What is the reasoning behind treating them as if there are gang members, murderers, terrorists, drug dealers.

What's the logic behind that?

No, I mean lochico, apparentimentrosia I mocho.

Mariana Moidra told us that there's seemingly no logic as to why the laws.

Don't change, But when you take a closer look, she says, there are economic and political interests that play here.

I interre is a political economics, petras, news and conscios.

She said.

The Aultra right and the anti abortion movement are negotiating with women's rights Commencentio Lohiko.

Now, dear listener, I told you that we would come back to Huyar Hina and her anti abortion organization in twenty fourteen, when the campaign of Las Yeesisiete was launched, Juli Has organization Sia Labida joined forces with a US based and goo.

That NGO is called the Alliance Defending Freedom, and it was a big player in the fall of Roe v.

Wade.

In the United States, the.

Christian Conservative movement's most influential arm is the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Was pleased with the court's decision.

Alliance for Defending Freedom is taking this as a win.

Together, the two organizations, one from the United States one from El Salvador called for new lawyers to join the anti abortion cause in El Salvador in order to make sure that the restrictions and the punishments against women stayed in place.

But there is a further connection between the United States and El Salvador on this issue because until very recently, the US was actually sending funds to Casa Dee muheres Lebtes in order to help help women find work, but earlier this year, the Trump administration slashed that funding as part of the administration's major cuts to foreign a.

Zuleimam, the cook who does it all at muheres Liires, says the cuts made a dent in the organization.

Wait even with less funding.

Feminist movements in Ensa vlor have made positive changes.

When the Salvadoran Feminist Collective first began its legal battles trying to free women like they al from prison, feminists relied heavily on international organizations, but today the group has academic, legal and medical allies not just abroad, but in its own country.

And as we sing with THELL, victims of the total abortion ban are getting out of prison and they're creating organizations like Muhetesludis to provide safe places for women just like them.

It is our last full night in El Salvador, and well, yes, both Monica and I are feeling quite emotional, and we feel like we needed to find a little bit more hope in this beautiful country.

So we decided to invite THEO and Suleima and her daughter but not the pet Rabbit, to join us for mariscos in La Costa, fresh seafood with a sunset on the coast.

We drive half an hour from the capitol and step into the warm Pacific Ocean.

THEO reminds me that it's the same ocean, the same country where my roots are, and for a moment, I feel gratitude.

It's about six pm and the sun is about to set.

Wow, get your relice, Simoo.

Wow.

Tale is really emotional.

It was more than just the beauty of this sunset.

The last time she experienced the sunsetting on the ocean was in nineteen ninety seven.

It's almost thirty years.

The sunset is beautiful.

It's the kind of sunset that reminds you of how small you are in this world.

Colors in clear Haperefectos de Lo.

Mass It's orange, yellow, bread and purple.

Sitting above the beach horizon.

It looked like it could be infinite.

There's said.

This is what life is all about.

They all says that's just the.

Emotion just looking at the ocean.

Bus piece a lot of peace.

Because they all says after a sunset, there is always a sunrise.

This episode was reported by Monica Morales Garcia and myself.

It was produced by Monica.

It was edited by Andrea Lopez Gruzzado and our managing editor Fernanda Echavari.

It was mixed by Gabriel Abias.

Fact checking for this episode by Roxana Aguire.

Special thanks to Volcanic Studios and our fixer in San Salvador journalist Ivan Manzano.

This episode is part of Futuro Investigates.

The Latino USA team also includes Julia Caruso, Jessica Elis, Victoria Strada, Renaldo LEANOZ Junior, Stephanie Lebau, Luis Luna Gloni mad Marquez, Julieta Marinelli, JJ Carubin, Adriana Rodriguez and Nancy Trujillo.

Benileei Ramirez and I are co executive producers and I'm your host Marino Josa.

Latino USA is part of Iheart's micu Dura podcast network.

Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Dear listener, join us again on our next episode.

In the meantime, We'll see you on social media.

Luchas gracias, estella proxima in Ayes.

Funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of health is made possible in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Latino USA is made possible in part by the Levi Strauss Foundation, Outfitting Movements and leaders fighting for a more just and abundant world, and Skyline Foundation