Since December, I had been in contact with a communications consultant that I had met some 16 years ago when I was working as a communications consultant for the municipality of Sucre in Caracas, Venezuela. It worked.
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The real challenge was going alone, being the videographer, trying to manage the stamina, trying to keep a fresh mind while Simone was producing a story in Iraq, but the adrenaline took control and fed me what I needed.
In a very accelerated tour to CECOT, I could cover the morning routines, creating the visual puzzle, grabbing the story by fragments, analyzing, deconstructing and reassembling everything in an almost 6 hour almost surreal conversation with CECOT's director, Belarmino García.
Three days earlier, I met with a lifelong brother and fixer, Edwin Cerritos, who took me to a street in the Mejicanos area where members of Barrio 18 doused a microbus with gasoline, set it ablaze with passengers inside, and gunned down those who tried to escape with automatic weapons.
This event, known as the Route 47 Massacre, occurred during the administration of leftist President Mauricio Funes and marked a turning point when Barrio 18 was designated as a terrorist organization.
Thanks to a local journalist, I was able to meet with Ms. Marcela Alvarado Noria, a farmer and mother of Duval Mata Alvarado, who is currently detained at CECOT.
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