"Don’t worry, your job will be here when you come back," Lorena Castillo’s supervisor reassured her when she asked to take a day off for a gynaecologist appointment. She had been working at the textile factory for the past six months and it was the first time she asked for a day off. It turned out to be her last.

The next day, Castillo was fired. The security guards at Las Mercedes industrial park - a tax-free zone for export-oriented assembly plants known as maquilas or maquiladoras established in the Nicaraguan capital - stopped her at the gate and handed her the pink slip...  

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