Carolina Jiménez Sandoval is the first Latina president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) She is a voice for women in the region on issues of human rights and democracy. At the center of her work is the fight against oblivion, she says.

She says there is a feeling that we are in a dark hour for democracy in Latin America. But she adds that civil society is very strong and that the region is not silent about the need to fight violence against women and the poor. She also talks about Nayib Bukele, an “aspiring authoritarian on steroids” and the repression that deepens in Venezuela. The Venezuelan was the first woman in her family to go to university in her native Acarigua (plains of Venezuela) She took to heart the advice of her grandmother who motivated her to study and she not only went to Caracas but to the U.S. and Japan and did not stop, she tells EL PAÍS.