Rosalina González’s granddaughter is nine months old. Every day of her short life has been spent in Izalco penitentiary in Sonsonate, the maximum-security prison in western El Salvador notorious for its documented history of torture and abuse.
The child was born in the prison after her already pregnant mother was detained on 19 February 2025, alongside her father and uncle, González’s sons. That night, González remembers being awoken at her home in Chilamates, in rural north-west El Salvador, by police who accused her family of unlawful association with gang members and took them away.
The charge is often used to imprison people under the state of emergency introduced in March 2022 by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who once described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”.
