Hi! I’m an independent journalist, editor, and fact-checker currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’m also a reporting fellow at Renaissance Journalism, and I periodically fact-check for Dissent, Jewish Currents, Rest of World, and Spotlight PA. Previously, I was a full-time fact-checker at The Nation and a reporter for El Tecolote, San Francisco’s Latinx newspaper.

I’ve written about inhumane conditions in ICE detention facilities, police violence, immigration, environmental racism, underground abortion networks, backlash to Ethnic Studies, soccer, the afterlives of Latin American dictatorships, and more for publications like The Nation, El Tecolote, and Jacobin Brasil.

Most recently, I fact-checked Sarah Weinman’s book Without Consent, a sprawling examination of the legal and social history of marital rape in the United States.

I hold a degree in Ethnic Studies and International and Public Affairs from Brown, where I was managing editor of The College Hill Independent and an editor for SOMOS Literary Magazine. I also speak Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and have experience reporting and writing in both languages.

You can contact me at mcavallaro@gmail.com. Find some of my writing here, and subscribe to my Substack here.