The chronic The Tamaulipas massacre, the American dream dies in Mexico carried out by journalists from EL PAÍS América has been recognized this Thursday with the Gabo Prize for the best text of the year awarded by the García Márquez Foundation, promoted by the writer in 1995. The awards, delivered in a virtual ceremony, also recognized the series of reports ‘Beyond the pier, migratory crisis in the Canary Islands’ by the journalist María Martín and the photojournalist Javier Bauluz as the best coverage.
What’s more, Unforgivable, a short film from the digital medium The lighthouse and the producer The Open Cage Recorded in a prison in El Salvador that shows an unknown face of the gangs, he won the Gabo Prize in the Image category. And work La Silla reconstructs how police officers killed the three young people from Verbenal, from the Colombian media La Silla Vacía, was recognized with the Gabo Award in the Innovation category. Nicaraguan cartoonist Pedro X. Molina, exiled from that country like many journalists by the Daniel Ortega regime, has received the Award of Excellence for his entire work. The jury has highlighted that from humor, Molina reveals the excesses of power in Nicaragua. In total, in this edition, more than 1,500 works from 26 countries of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America were presented.
The jury of the text category composed of Ginna Morelo, Héctor Feliciano and Joanna Gorjão, recognized the report The Tamaulipas massacre, the American dream dies in Mexico by Lorena Arroyo, Pablo Ferri, Eliezer Budasoff, Héctor Guerrero and Mónica González Islas, journalists from the EL PAÍS newsroom in Mexico, as a work that describes the background and context of migration, a phenomenon of continental dimensions, and that reconstructs a very powerful case in a story “with clarity, cohesion and concreteness.”
The text reconstructs the massacre of 16 Guatemalan migrants who were shot to death and burned in the Mexican department of Tamaulipas, 60 kilometers from the border with the United States, in which police from that state were implicated. The journalists retraced the steps of the Guatemalans from their homes in the mountains of the department of San Marcos, where they spoke with a dozen relatives of the victims to understand the reasons for their departure, to northern Mexico, where the migrants found the death a few kilometers from their destination and where reporters searched for clues about the group’s last hours.
“The report shows a concern for curatorship. The journalists, framed in the facts and the reporterial investigations, wove a good story ”, Morelo highlighted. “The subject of the report, although well known, develops very well with a very powerful case; the background is described, the context, the citations are pertinent, the reporting is extensive and extended in time, ”Feliciano wrote about the work.
The jury considers that the work accounts for the continental dimensions of the migratory phenomenon, one of the most frequently discussed current issues in Central America, due to its scope and impact. “The fact that it portrays such a tragic but frequent reality – and that it should not be – can serve to sensitize authorities and politicians on the issue of migration in the United States and in general for people who only want a better life and they die ”, said Gorjão. “Although migration is a widely discussed issue, reality shows precisely that it is the result of an urgent and important agenda that must continue to be covered, because the facts are increasing,” Morelo added.
On the other hand, the series of reports on the migratory crisis in the Canary Islands by María Martín and Javier Bauluz between October 2020 and February 2021 was distinguished as the best coverage among 400 nominated jobs. Reporter and photographer went through the pain and misery of the migrants who arrived in Gran Canaria tracing “a dramatic, crude, but hopeful journey that narrates the journey of African immigrants,” the jury said.
“Beyond the pier, migration crisis in the Canary Islands it was imposed by the quality in the multiple formats that it uses, excellent photographs, texts with well-told stories and a well-achieved coverage in each of the formats used to relate the tragedy of the immigrants from North Africa ”, the argument reads from the jurors Guilherme Alpendre (Brazil), Mónica González (Chile) and Bernardo Loyola (Mexico).
The jury values the journalistic effort of the series of reports by Martín y Bauluz, which makes it a piece that not only informs and denounces, but also teaches. “They managed to go beyond the story full of pain, finding possible solutions away from the tragedy and focused on the hope of the protagonists portrayed in ten installments” in a “coverage that exposed the slowness and lack of coordination of the Government to avoid a humanitarian crisis, accompanied by human rights violations by some local groups that attacked migrants and that the authorities were unaware of, in addition to the systematic impediments suffered by journalists who tried to document the crisis in the Spanish Canary Islands ”.
“This award is not only a recognition, but also an invitation to the media, such as EL PAÍS, to continue betting on journalism jobs that require time, resources and journalists who have enough support to produce high-profile journalistic works. impact on our societies ”, concludes the jury.
Subscribe here to the newsletter from EL PAÍS América and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of the region