When Ana Dubón was 13 years old, she began to work at a local radio station, earning $2 a day. Contributing about $40 a month to the family made her feel like an adult. Her pride surged when she got to host her own show a year later.
Dubón lives in Guarjila village, in the Chalatenango department of north-western El Salvador. While other young radio jockeys played reggaeton on their programmes, she spoke about injustices she was witnessing in her community.
“In 2005, at just 15, I found myself talking about something serious: mining,” Dubón, now 26 years old, reminisced when I met her last August. “I knew nothing about mines, but I had to learn it all to talk about it on the radio.” We were in the kitchen-garden of her rural home in Guarjila, and she was trying to not let her two-year-old daughter slip from her arms. The toddler won, and began to dig into the mud.
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