This is the web version of Americanas, EL PAÍS América’s newsletter in which it addresses news and ideas with a gender perspective. If you want to sign up, you can in this link.
Luisa was sentenced last October to 30 years in prison for an out-of-hospital birth in which she lost her daughter. When this young Salvadoran woman received her sentence for aggravated murder, her body began to tremble. Petra, the private lawyer, patted his knee to compose himself and state his final argument. “You are applying the law that protects children to the daughter that I lost,” he recalls telling the judge. “Apply it to the two children I have and they will go three decades without seeing me.” The magistrate turned and closed the file.
A state of emergency was applied to him, as to almost 90,000 Salvadorans, which undermines his right to defense and does not guarantee a fair trial. The laxity of this regime – increasingly less exceptional – is such that activists, robberies and obstetric emergencies are also persecuted under this umbrella and not just “animals and gang members” for whom President Nayib Bukele established this policy almost four years ago.
On the car ride home, Petra couldn’t hold back the tears of anger and frustration. She thought about what farewell to her children would have been like if she had not been the lawyer, but the defendant. “We will appeal and continue to fight for others, but we have a family. We are human and this too weighs on us. It is impossible that it does not affect us”, she says emotionally in a café in Bogota, together with two other lawyers, Alejandra and María Fernanda. To date, Luisa is still in prison, without any prison to accommodate her, as the judge has not yet issued a final sentence. The food is provided by these three women. “When it comes to the regime, the agents take all the licenses,” replies María Fernanda.
None of them want to reveal their real names or any clues that might reveal where they work or who they are currently defending. The last thing they want, they repeat, is for harm to be done to “the girls” or their families, to whom they have already given clear instructions in case “things get worse”: “I have already told them not to spend a single dollar on my defense. I know that if they make me prisoner, this Government will never let me out”, complains María Fernanda. They are the face of resistance of a beleaguered movement. And they are also mothers, couples and friends who fear the consequences of this increasingly authoritarian and unpunished Administration. “We don’t want to be brave,” they repeat. They shouldn’t be, but they are.
In El Salvador, defending sexual and reproductive rights has never been an easy task. Since the country decided in 1998 to include in the Constitution that life “begins at conception”, the rights of thousands of women have lagged behind those of the fetus, despite the fact that the Inter-American System for Human Rights had clarified its position in two rulings. The work of lawyers who defend women criminalized for obstetric emergencies or abortions has always been arduous. Now, in the Bukele era, something else is added: the imposition of a state of exception which demonstrates – ever more blatantly – that the initial objective was never to put an end to the gangs.
There are currently thirty women criminalized for crimes related to abortion and obstetric emergencies. Girls who ended up with unwanted pregnancies, victims of rape, out-of-hospital births with complications, spontaneous abortions… Of them, at least five have seen the regime applied, according to one of the 43 decrees approved since 2022, which opens the field of application to anyone. This translates into a new setback for Salvadorans. All of them (who are known to be in legal proceedings) were charged between 2019 and 2025, under Bukele’s tenure.
Last year the feminist movement celebrated the release of Lilian, the last of 17 women imprisoned for obstetric emergencies. At the time, there were still 11 criminal cases pending, most of which were reactivated in this last term. “In El Salvador we are taking steps backwards,” he says. Alexandra.
Before the state of emergency, a woman accused by crime For abortion there were 72 hours until the initial hearing and another six months of education until the first preliminary hearing. At the time, the most common thing was for him to go free until he got a conviction (or not). With the implementation of the regime, these terms have been extended to two years or more of education during which the girls are in bartolinas or preventive detention until the sentence is pronounced.
Furthermore, summary secrecy is applied to them, so lawyers cannot access physical documents or evidence in advance for case preparation. “They make it very difficult for women to have the right to defend themselves,” says María Fernanda. At least three women are currently in prison, including a 17-year-old minor, sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated murder.
The worst thing for these three Salvadoran women is the misinformation that the accused usually receive, almost always coming from poor and uneducated backgrounds. “When we finally find them, many don’t trust private lawyers or that we don’t hire them and think it’s better to have someone close to the government defend them,” explains Alejandra. “This way they believe they will have a less severe sentence.”
Members of the popular court who do not arrive out of fear, women once again handcuffed to a stretcher and with the police in front of the door of the delivery room… The stories of Manuela, Beatriz or Teodora – from more than ten years ago – are repeated endlessly. El Salvador is a horror movie on loop. “We have a lot of work ahead of us and we can’t leave. If we don’t defend them, who will?”, they say.
Our recommended stories of the week:
The femicide gave her sedatives passing them off as a digestion remedy “to take advantage of the politics” of his partner, who wanted a divorce.
The representative of the Big Apple, the first Hispanic in the history of her party on Capitol Hill, criticizes the attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers and warns: “We are heading towards a dictatorship; if we are not already there”
Now we don’t just have to endure the question “where are the feminists?” people, but they blame us for ruining their toxic jobs. This is a cross and not Rosalía’s
Eimmy Téllez and Valentina Padilla are two of the young music selectors who are leading the rebirth of the genre in Colombia’s capital
The singer revealed in an interview with ‘Rolling Stone’ that she was hospitalized for mental health problems: “I completely broke down. It was really terrifying. There was a moment when I thought I wouldn’t be able to recover.”
The second feature film by actress Dolores Fonzi reconstructs the case against the young woman who in 2014 was detained in hospital accused of murder due to a miscarriage
In “Lux”, the singer and songwriter moves towards spirituality through the lives of several women who inhabit the ideology of religions such as Catholicism or Islam. In an extensive interview with ‘El País Semanal’ he talks about his moment in life, but also about the conflict in Palestine or the series ‘Euphoria’
