Torn from their community without having committed a crime: the reality of youth in El Salvador

He was once the pride of his community before becoming an absence: “They took him from his home… sick, only to question him,” recalls Silvia Yanira Hernández about her son, Saúl Antonio Blanco Hernández, a former beach soccer national team player, detained since 2022. Three years later, although —she says— “his record is clean,” he still has not returned. Her request is direct to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele: to take him out of that place. She does not speak of politics; she speaks of a son. Of a source of pride who today remains imprisoned, while a mother continues waiting for justice to arrive before oblivion.