I was stranded in the Miami airport in November 2022 when I met two incredible journalists en route to the annual Congress of Latin American Investigative Reporters (called COLPIN, for its initials in Spanish). We huddled at a counter, eating empanadas and sipping espresso, swapping stories in a limbo created by long delays to an American Airlines flight that had unexplained mechanical problems as one of Florida’s tropical storms approached.
I soon learned that my new friends, Juan José Martinez and Mario Luis Reyes, had bigger problems than late flights: Both were living in exile and under threat of being jailed by their own governments, basically for being excellent journalists.
Martínez has been forced to live permanently apart from his Salvadoran friends and family, though he continues to report for InSight Crime on leaders of MS-13, the powerful criminal organization, and how that American-born street gang has transformed itself into a transnational business. Both he and his brothers, also award-winning investigative journalists, have been targeted personally and professionally by El Salvador’s elected president, who sometimes hurls threats and insults directly at them via Twitter.
