Closed doors

ONE DAY IN OCTOBER 2016, in a village on El Salvador’s Pacific Coast, 24-year-old Arnovis Guidos Portillo accidentally collided with a local gang member’s brother during a soccer game. After word reached the gang leadership, men came to Arnovis’ parents’ house, looking for him. He began receiving threatening phone calls. Sos tumba, they said. You’re dead.

“Just leave,” his brother, Miguel, said. But in gang-controlled El Salvador, relocating to a new town was not enough: Arnovis had to leave his