Brecha and the Uruguayan Casino Investigation: Exposing Corruption and Its Consequences
In 2006, an ambitious investigation began into the notorious corruption within municipal casinos in Montevideo, Uruguay. Spearheaded by transparency journalists, including Fabián Werner of Brecha, the inquiry revealed systemic exploitation and resulted in the imprisonment of five executives of state-owned casino syndicates by the end of 2009. I met Werner in Montevideo in 2013 at…
Narcos, Vigilantes, and the Press: Reporting Córdoba’s Year of Chaos
Twenty-thirteen was a banner year for bad news in Córdoba. When I arrived in December the local newsstand was plastered with headlines announcing another burst of inflation. A magazine cover featured a photo of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner posing nude (on purpose) and across the street municipal workers were still sweeping up broken glass from a 35-hour strike…
Into the Chapare part 2 – war stories
“You can do what you want but tonight I am going to work,” he said. Using flashlights and the flat back of the blade we walked the creek until 1 a.m. and brought in 36 fish, most of them perch about the size of a woman´s hand. Ramallo, 42, owns 16 hectares in the town of…
Into the Chapare Part 1 – Dispatches from a Bolivian coca farm
VILLA TUNARI, BOLIVIA I have taken a job in Bolivia working for a farmer who grows coca – the same plant used to make the illegal drug cocaine. As far as I can tell, none of the coca we are growing supports the illegal narcotics industry, but I have only been here for four days…
Slaying Goliath – investigative reporting at the center of Bolivia’s drug trade
SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA – The big story right now in Bolivia is the Aerocon plane that crashed last week in the northern amazon city of Riberalta, killing eight passengers including one eight-year-old girl. What wasn’t immediately clear from the initial reports were the circumstances by which the victims died. Thanks to the work…
VIDEO: Evo speaks in El Alto – the city of the revolution
EL ALTO, BOLIVIA – Today I watched Bolivian President Evo Morales’ speech commemorating the 10th anniversary of Black October, Oct. 17, the most violent episode in the country’s recent history. In October 2003 government troops, under the administration of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, killed an estimated 80 people and injured nearly 500 in an…
Sitting with the Dead
Last week I participated in a wake for the martiarch of a local mining family in Potosí. The five children spent their entire savings shipping the body back from Argentina, where the woman had died of cancer. The ceremony lasted until sunrise and, as is the custom in Bolivia, we sat with the body all…
VIDEO: Exploiting Bolivia – part 1 – “the riches that made us poor”
Nothing tells the story better than the hard facts: Potosí, the capital of the poorest department of the poorest country in South America, cradles what was once the richest mountain on earth. During the Spanish colonial era of the 16th and 17th centuries, indigenous and african slaves extracted veins of pure silver two-meters-wide and several…
Bolivia playing dead: when the only power is the power to do nothing
During the 24-hour strike in Potosí Wednesday, Jhonny Llally Huata, president of the Potosí Comité Cívico, answered a call from an assistant to the Governor of the Department of Potosí at the desk of his second floor office. “This is not for me, this is for Potosí,” he said and hung up before giving the caller…
Eyes open, mouth closed: Bolivia’s history of fear and silence
A wise editor once told me, “Names make news.” Without names you have no sources, and without sources you have no story. This story has no named sources, because there are not many people in Potosí – the poorest region of the poorest country in South America – who are willing to put their name…
