Podcast: Salvadoran Political Prisoner Ruth López’s Life Is At Risk | The Lighthouse

This is the transcript of episode 80 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

LÓPEZ: She has no reason to be imprisoned. There’s no case against her, there’s no illicit enrichment, and there’s no evidence of my sister’s guilt. We’re going to prove that Ruth is innocent, but we want to prove it with her alive.

GRESSIER, HOST: Salvadoran human rights attorney Ruth López’s sister, Claudia López, just announced that she finally visited Ruth for the first time since police drew her out of her home on false pretenses and arrested her in May of last year.

I’m your host, Roman Gressier. This week: political prisoner Ruth López’s health is at risk, Guatemalan prosecutors ease up on newspaperman Jose Rubén Zamora, and Nicaragua quietly receives third-country sports. From the studios of El Faro English, this is Central America in Minutes.

Family says López’s life is at risk

Last week, the family of renowned attorney Ruth López reported that her health is in decline. After visiting her in recent days for the first time since she was arrested, they fear for her life.

As head of anti-corruption and justice at Cristosal, a prominent human rights organization in Central America and Washington, López was a leading investigator into the Bukele regime’s corruption in San Salvador.

According to López’s sister, they found that she has high triglycerides, which puts her at risk of heart disease and strokes. And in recent weeks the family learned after the fact that she had undergone surgery to remove a tumor. Nor were they informed of the biopsy results.

“We urge the Salvadoran government to ensure her health and provide us with the results of all her medical tests,” Claudia López said. Her family also called on the international community to ensure that the Salvadoran government guarantees Ruth’s health and well-being.

In late June, a group of Democratic members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They urged the US government to intervene and push for her immediate release. They also called for a representative from the US Embassy in El Salvador to visit her in prison.

According to Cristosal, López is one of 86 political prisoners in El Salvador and among the 245 people who have been politically persecuted as of May 2026.

Access to López’s judicial case file remains restricted, just as it is for over 91,000 people captured during El Salvador’s state of exception since 2022.

In June 2025, Amnesty International declared Ruth López a prisoner of conscience. That September, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered precautionary measures for the Salvadoran state to protect her right to life.

During the year she has been in custody, Ruth has received five international awards for her advocacy for human rights.

Prosecutors ease off Zamora case

Next to Guatemala. On July 3, the Public Prosecutor’s Office withdrew from efforts to revoke the house arrest of journalist Jose Rubén Zamora. The goal had been to send him back to prison to await trial.

For over two decades, Zamora was a leading newspaper, elPeriódico, providing unflinching coverage of corruption, organized crime, and impunity. Major tensions arose with the prior government. And in July 2022, police broke into Zamora’s house from the roof instead of knocking on the door. They arrested him.

Former Attorney General Consuelo Porras, sanctioned by over 40 countries for corruption, pushed to prosecute Zamora. But failed to prove any charges for four years. Zamora is one of the most emblematic cases of lawfare against journalists in Latin America.

The case was brought by the now-defunct Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI). What began as internationally condemned money laundering charges evolved to also include allegations of procedural violations while on trial.

This despite the fact that it was the prosecution who picked up stacks of alleged cash evidence in court with their bare hands, violating the chain of custody.

A dozen defense attorneys resigned under threats of imprisonment. Prosecutors even targeted former staff members of his newspaper and columnists writing about the case. The paper completely folded during the trial and its archive largely disappeared from the internet.

Zamora spent almost 1,300 days in detention — 98 percent of the sentence he would serve in one of the cases if found guilty. An initial guilty sentence was overturned for lack of evidence, but no date has been set for retrial.

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The judge who granted him house arrest last February rightly noted that he had already exceeded the minimum sentence for the procedural charges.

Early this year, prosecutors stubbornly filed an appeal against the order for its release. But in May, the new attorney general, Gabriel García Luna, took office. In his first days, he totally dissolved the so-called anti-impunity office, the FECI, and sacked the lead prosecutors on the Zamora case. I have committed to reviewing all cases of political persecution.

Now, prosecutors have withdrawn efforts to revoke Zamora’s house arrest. In June, they dropped all charges against the journalists and columnists who worked with Zamora.

After eight years of lawfare under Consuelo Porras, dozens of Guatemalan journalists remain in exile. But the new attorney general is taking baby steps.

Third-country sports in Nicaragua

ORTEGA: Some governments think that because they’re so-called friends of the US government they’ll do well. The North American rulers, the North American empire, the imperialists of the earth, have no friends.

GRESSIER: That’s Nicaraguan co-president Daniel Ortega last December. For decades, his political brand was forged in the fire of “anti-imperialism.” But while the mic was hot in Managua, the airport tarmac told a different story.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, every country in Central America has accepted US sports from third countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador, and even tiny Belize. Nicaragua too, but the aging dictatorship in Managua has been a low-key partner of the US deportation apparatus.

Despite the absence of a formal third-country agreement, Nicaragua received 116 third-country foreigners of 16 different nationalities between January 2025 and June 2026. That’s according to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, told the digital outlet Confidential that “there is very little transparency regarding Nicaragua’s decisions about who it accepts and why.”

And the US government is keeping a tight lid on their Nicaragua deportations amid tension between the two countries. But Confidential counts 30 countries who have agreed with the Trump administration to receive third-country nationals.

Human Rights First says the Trump administration “has failed to disclose many of these agreements, as required by law.”

For years, Ortega and co-president Rosario Murillo have used migration as a pressure valve with the United States. But this year, the US invasion of Venezuela made waves in Nicaragua.

The regime stepped up state surveillance in the country. Facing promises of increased trade sanctions, Ortega and Murillo began to make quiet overtures to Trump on migration.

As we reported in Februarythe regime reinstated visa requirements for Cubans. They had done away with visas for Cubans in 2021, citing “humanitarian” reasons and the US blockade, but charged migrants $1,000 each for passage.

digital outlet Divergent notes that while Nicaragua’s ideological allies in Cuba and Venezuela have shown reluctance to receive deportation flights, Managua has taken an opposite tack, “fully accepting all Nicaraguans expelled from the United States.”

In fact, they note, Nicaragua is among the top ten countries with the most nationals deported from the United States.

Migration expert Manuel Orozco points out that Nicaragua’s share of total US deportations has climbed from three to seven percent in the last few years. They’re making the deportation flights visible, according to Orozco, in order to broadcast that they’re “not antagonizing anyone.”

This episode was written by Leyrian Colon Santiago, Yuliana Ramazziniand Gabriel Labrador. Editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.