Today, among the dozens of journalists who have sought refuge in Guatemala, there is secrecy and uncertainty. At some meetings, the presence of a camera is frowned upon. It is normal: There are many more questions than answers. Several colleagues did not want to appear in this photo essay. Many meetings, where dozens of journalists from different media outlets discussed options for returning, their faces long and haggard, cannot be shown. At least not yet.
These scenes are fragments of a reality still difficult to digest. None of the new arrivals have a permanent base: Every so often they have to change accommodation, lugging around the few belongings they brought with them for what they thought would be a week-long trip. Amid the constant chaos of switching between apartments on Airbnb, they often avoid going to the supermarket. Colleagues juggle their money to rent between several people, or to rent outside Guatemala City, in towns where it is cheaper.
In conversations, the idea of returning always comes up. “What are you going to do when you get back?” I have heard that question so many times these days. I have seen colleagues talk to their children on the phone every night. We all find it difficult to accept the label “exile,” but it is increasingly less a distant rumor and more a constant concern: Some colleagues, after obtaining sharper information from police or prosecutorial sources, have called off their attempts to return to the country as many as three times.
For many, El Salvador is no longer an option for practicing journalism. They have decided not to return because they have information that they would be captured, because they believe that staying in the country could have consequences for their families, or because the passage of the Foreign Agents Law will ratchet up taxation on anyone the Bukele dictatorship deems to be just that, a “foreign agent”.
Slowly, and then suddenly, they have come to believe that their lives would be impossible in El Salvador. Sleeping little has become a daily occurrence for these dozens of journalists who now wander from apartment to apartment in cities in Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States.
These are shards of that daily life, an incomplete story that is just beginning, still an open question, in which there is a long way to go and many more are missing: journalists, activists, human rights defenders, critics of the dictatorship. In El Salvador, so battered by mass exiles during the civil war and the most violent years of gang control, a new exile is emerging, for now made up of dozens of Salvadorans: those who do not think like Bukele — and say so.
Journalist Mónica Rodríguez and her partner, Steve Magaña, covered a sit-in by families of the El Bosque campesino cooperative from May 9 to 12, in the vicinity of Nayib Bukele’s residence. The protest culminated in the arrest of Pastor José Ángel Pérez and lawyer Alejandro Henríquez. A week later, according to Mónica, plainclothes police officers arrived at the El Bosque cooperative asking about journalists and inquiring about Radio Bálsamo’s role in the community. On May 19, when they woke to the news of anti-corruption attorney Ruth López’s arrest, they left home to safe locations until, on the 23rd, they departed for another country with only a few items of clothing. Mónica and Steve’s home was raided by the Attorney General’s Office on December 4, 2024. Computers, cell phones, and hard drives were seized, which have not been returned. They have not been charged with any crime. “I think the reason we moved, apart from protecting our safety as journalists, is to distance ourselves from the people we love, because staying there is more dangerous; we are a risk,” said Monica. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
Most of the journalists who arrived in Guatemala sought accommodation in apartments rented on Airbnb. Others were taken in by shelters where they tried to maintain a normal daily life, although this proved impossible. In one of these shelters, the electric stove did not work, so they had to buy an “electric resistance”: a cable mounted on a small metal structure. This is how they cooked for three people. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
“El Salvador is no longer viable for journalism,” Jorge Beltrán Luna, 56, told me as we rode the elevator in a building in Guatemala City. Beltrán Luna is a journalist for El Diario de Hoy. He arrived in Guatemala on June 14. It took him a week to plan his departure after the arrest on Saturday, June 7, of constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya. “I haven’t slept well since he was captured. That day I said, ‘Here, in El Salvador, it is no longer possible to stay.’” (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
“I feel so bad that you are leaving, because you are paying for what happened with our separation. I feel like I have lost everything from 33 years of life together, difficult moments and also beautiful ones. But one day, God willing, we will be together if all goes well,” reads an excerpt from a letter Beltrán Luna’s wife gave him before his departure. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
From a white bag, Jorge Beltrán took out dozens of pills that are part of the prescription medication he takes regularly. In total, he stocked up on medication for three months. “You never know where you’re going to end up. I don’t know how to buy medicine here, so I prefer to be stocked up,” he explained. Several journalists left El Salvador in June with a minimal supply of essential medicines. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
On May 7, 2025, I left El Salvador without knowing that I would not be able to return — or at least without being certain that I could go back. I received the World Press Photo award in Amsterdam that same month. There I met other photojournalists in complex situations, such as Ye Aung Thu, who, due to internal conflict, could not return to his native Burma. “I’m not going back because I don’t want to expose my wife and son,” Ye Aung Thu told me. I now hear that phrase repeated by colleagues who have left El Salvador: They are protecting themselves and, at the same time, their families. Many preferred not to appear in this report for that very reason: to protect someone else. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
Everything my colleagues and I have now fits into a few suitcases. Some, speaking anonymously, told me that they left the country with only the clothes on their backs and a few pairs of underwear, and that they are slowly buying clothes to wear. Here, everyday things have become abnormal. For example, we avoid buying many things at the supermarket because we are constantly changing living quarters. When we move, we take what we can; some things are left in the refrigerators. We are constantly looking for a place to rent. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
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In my cell phone wallet, I still have the electronic pass that would have taken me, along with some of my colleagues from El Faro, from Costa Rica back to El Salvador on Saturday, June 7. After spending some time away as a precaution, which ended up lasting for weeks, it seemed like we had everything figured out. We talked about what we would do when we returned: Some wanted to go to the beach, others wanted to see family, pick up their pets, or take their children on outings. The night before we were scheduled to board Avianca flight 630, a diplomatic source warned of a police operation to arrest El Faro journalists upon their arrival at Monsignor Romero Airport in El Salvador. We decided not to take that flight, and to travel to Guatemala a few days later to regroup and figure out what to do. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
Some colleagues who did not board that flight have spent more than two months away from the country. “No one wants to be swallowed up by a Salvadoran prison,” said journalist Arelí, a pseudonym to protect her identity, before beginning her search for her second place to stay in Guatemala City on June 16, 2025. She had arrived in Guatemala on June 8, one day after the arrest of constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya, who was detained at his home in Santa Tecla on charges of money and asset laundering and now faces a secret trial, like all high-profile cases in the Salvadoran dictatorship and the more than 85,000 people captured under the state of exception. Arelí says that, for now, it is better to be away from her family: “I want to protect them, my relatives. That’s why I came, because I don’t want the police to come to their homes, as has happened to some journalists.” (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
“In recent days, no one wants to come near you in El Salvador; people stay away from you,” said a colleague. “People ask you to delete chats or not to call them. They see you as a leper,” another colleague told me. With those words echoing in my mind, I woke up in the early hours of June 24 in Guatemala City. I grabbed my cell phone and recorded it so I wouldn’t forget that thought and could write it down later. Insomnia is a constant presence these days. Before trying to go back to sleep, facing the lights of my computer and of a city that is not mine, I picked up my phone one last time to record this sentence that a colleague’s wife said to me: “Even my friends have stopped answering me.” (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
“When I was thinking about how I was going to get paid after the Foreign Agents Law came into effect, I made the decision to leave; things are only going to get worse,” said Eric, a fictitious name to protect his identity, from his place of lodging. On May 31, he packed his backpack for just four days. On the day we spoke, it had been 12 days. On the day he was supposed to leave, soldiers arrived at his home, a private residence in an area where military presence is rare. That led Eric to make a snap decision: “That’s why I’ve decided not to return to the country permanently. Whatever I do, I’ll start from scratch somewhere else,” he concluded. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
In late 2021, the daily lives of El Faro journalists were disrupted after several analyses by Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity laboratory at the University of Toronto, concluded that 22 members of the newspaper had been targeted by Pegasus software. To date, during meetings, all phones are collected and taken to another room, away from journalists to prevent any information leaks. In the image, at least 22 journalists from El Faro and other media outlets, gathered one night in June in Guatemala City to discuss their departure from the country, hand over their cell phones to a colleague who collects them in a box to remove them from the room. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
On June 23, 2025, after interviewing other journalists, I was walking through the corridors of a religious facility that houses journalists and activists who have left El Salvador for fear of arrest. In one of the darkest corners, the reflection of the dim light of a rainy day in Guatemala made the corner of a painting of Monsignor Óscar Arnulfo Romero shine. Instantly, one of Romero’s most famous quotes echoed in my mind: “A journalist either tells the truth or is not a journalist.” Perhaps it is a mechanism of consolation. “Doing our job well is what keeps us here,” Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of El Faro, repeats to us. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
On June 13, the Association of Journalists of El Salvador documented the forced displacement of at least 40 journalists, calling it a “mass exodus.” However, there is no clear number of human rights defenders who left after the arrest of Ruth López on May 18. Ingrid Escobar, one of the most powerful and international voices against the state of exception, director of Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, arrived in Guatemala on June 8 from San Salvador, along with her two children, after suffering constant harassment by the police at her home. She left Guatemala in the early hours of June 11: “I don’t regret all the work we’ve done with Socorro Jurídico. I’ll definitely come back to work even harder. Now I have to go; there’s no way around it,” she told me before entering La Aurora International Airport to continue her exile in another country. (Photo: Carlos Barrera)El Faro
