Inside People
Illustration by Liliana Ospina (aka Lilondra) Mariana Martínez Esténs knows how journalists like a near-death experience. As a Mexican journalist who often works with foreign reporters who drop in to chase the country’s “most dangerous” stories, she also knows how reporters like to talk about those dangers. She names these tales “fireflies” — stories that become performance and anesthetic for the teller, beams of light that gather audiences and cover personal layers of fear.
In Inside People, Esténs reflects on the last decade of her work. Through vignettes about incarcerated people, documentary photographs of prison riots, and notes of confessions from women in a penitentiary — and by blending different narrative forms — she gives fuller shape to the stories about people who live in the carceral system in Mexico. Her book’s illustrations are softly affecting, and the inclusion of handwritten poetry offers a direct line between the writer and the reader. Among these, we have moments of breath: interludes that play with the act of diversion and pick up ideas which are mentioned elsewhere in the narrative.
Ultimately, Esténs rejects the dominant model of extractive journalism; instead, she analyzes her own role in it and proposes an alternative.
— Alexandra Valahu, Guernica Global Spotlights Co-Editor
Bryan Salazar
Bryan Santiago Salazar is a brick wall with a sideways smile and eyes that don’t blink. His hands are always akimbo. He partially buttons up his fitted shirt, just the last two buttons before the huge metal buckle on his belt.
He’s been in prison for nine of his eleven-year sentence. His record includes two stabbing murders that he claims were all just a big mix-up. He is married with two children and
