Heather Gies is a journalist and editor who has covered human rights, resource conflicts, and politics in Latin America.
Covering and Uncovering Latin America's Media Struggles
Editor's introduction to the Winter 2021 issue of the NACLA Report, "Dispatches from the Field: Covering and Uncovering Latin America's Media Struggles."
Dispossession, Resistance, and Solidarity in Central America
Editor's introduction to the Winter 2020 issue of the NACLA Report, "Fighting for a People's Isthmus: Dispossession, Resistance, and Solidarity in Central America."
Against Forgetting
Editor's introduction to the Summer 2021 issue of the NACLA Report, "Against Forgetting: Mobilizing Memory for Reckoning and Repair."
Honduran Teen Fled Gangs at Home Only to Be Murdered While Stranded at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Sixteen-year-old Jorge Alexander Ruiz took off alone in the middle of the night from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to escape pressure to join a gang.
Once lush, El Salvador is dangerously close to running dry
The country's shrinking water supply is in jeopardy as weak regulation, lagging services, and climate variability fuel a complex crisis.
Canada: The Other Imperial Power in Latin America
The Canadian mining industry has an egregious track record in Latin America.
El Salvador massacre: forensics teams dig for remains as US envoy faces grilling
Thirty-eight years after he lost his mother, five siblings, and five nieces and nephews during El Salvador’s brutal civil war, Santos Alvaro Pereira still breaks down in tears when he recalls their murder.
Cubans approve a new Constitution: What does the vote mean?
Cuban voters ratified a new Constitution on Sunday that legalises the free market in a vote that saw a growing portion of the population express dissent compared with the island's last constitutional referendum in 1976.
Disaster Averted: How Unions Have Dodged the Blow of Janus (So Far)
Public-sector unions defied the Right’s attempt to crush them—and were transformed in the process.
El Salvador Elects Nayib Bukele as President
Voters in El Salvador elected a new president. Heather Gies, a freelance reporter in San Salvador, discusses the election.
The kids aren't alright — when being young is a crime in El Salvador
Daniel Alemán’s experience has become emblematic of the notion that in El Salvador, being a young man can be a crime, a phrase often repeated by human rights campaigners in the small Central American country that is notorious for lawless violence.
The rape survivor facing 20 years in jail lays bare El Salvador’s war on women
When police arrested Imelda Cortez in the hospital for having an abortion, she didn’t even realise she had given birth to her rapist’s baby in the toilet.
Our Food System Is Built on Exploitation. Now Farmworkers Are Saying “No More.”
As long as the people working closest to food’s roots as farmworkers are mistreated, including earning wages that don’t even allow them to put meals on their own tables, there’s no way to have dignified or just food choices up the food supply chain.
Agroecology as a Tool of Sovereignty and Resilience in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria
Two members of Organización Boricuá, which recently won the Food Sovereignty Prize, discuss lessons learned from organizing on the front lines of climate change.
El Salvador's disappearing farmers
Salvadoran youth are abandoning the countryside, leaving behind an increasingly aging population of farmers.