Across Central America, the promises of democracy are being tested in the haze of corruption, repression and silence. In Honduras, dark money shapes elections from the shadows, while Ana Paola Hall faces the impossible task of leading a polarized electoral council. In Mexico, families still mourn the migrants burned alive in Ciudad Juárez, demanding justice from a state that looks away.

Meanwhile, the Mexican Congress builds a friendship with Nicaragua’s dictatorship, blurring the line between diplomacy and complicity. Exile becomes policy as Nicaraguans are told to ask for forgiveness or pay to return home. In El Salvador, three deported men vanish inside Bukele’s prisons, swallowed by a system that trades security for fear.

When the smoke clears, what remains are the echoes of lives lived under control and the faint persistence of those who still believe in truth, memory and the right to be free.