FJP Latin America

museumoflatinamericanart:

One of the many photographs you will see in Katharsis, our upcoming exhibition opening on June 30.

Lourdes Grobet (Mexico, b. 1940),Tinieblas Jr., Alushe y Tinieblas /

Tinieblas Jr. (Darkness Jr.), Alushe and Tinieblas (Darkness), 1980

Cibachrome. Fundación Televisa Collection, Mexico.

FJP: Tinieblas, the mighty luchador on the right, used to play the role of a superhero in a Mexican sitcom aired back in the early nineties. Those were the days. -Roberto

Jorge Ramos, a powerful voice on immigration

Today, The Los Angeles Times profiles Jorge Ramos, one of the most prolific Latino journalists in the history of the United States.

Along with several personal anecdotes and testimonies from Latino public officials about Ramos’ personal style, the article also draws a quite interesting approach to watchdog news broadcasting: a barefaced 30-year long period of political activism on behalf of Latinos.

Here is an excerpt:

[Jorge Ramos] is also an unapologetic proponent for immigration reform. Long before the current debate over immigration policy in Washington, Ramos was on a crusade to demand changes in the law by chronicling stories of broken dreams and broken families.

Last fall, when no Latinos were chosen to moderate any of the presidential debates, Ramos complained that the debate commission was “stuck in the 1950s” and then made news when Univision held its own candidate forums with Mitt Romney and President Obama. Ramos didn’t go easy on either one.

“We do have this antique notion that a newsman will be disinterested and stay above the fray but Ramos reports like he is a lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza or a Democratic pundit,” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative watchdog group, Media Research Center.

Ramos makes no apologies for his or Univision’s forceful stance. “Our position is clearly pro-Latino or pro-immigrant,” he said. “We are simply being the voice of those who don’t have a voice.”

Ramos insists that journalism is his first priority. He told his TV audience, “We have always defended our journalistic integrity.” Still, he concedes that he is closer to the immigration story than most. “I am emotionally linked to this issue,” Ramos said. “Because once you are an immigrant, you never forget that you are one.”

FJP: Some say that Ramos is continuing a long tradition in ethnic media of fighting to correct social unfairness, but can a news broadcast with 2 million daily viewers across the nation still be considered “ethnic media”?

Bonus: Our take on Univision’s bid for a Presidential Debate back in 2012, and on Jorge Ramos’ Al Punto gaining traction among Sunday morning political talk shows.

Image: Ramos reporting from Ground Zero in New York City right after the 9/11 attacks, via JorgeRamos.com

We are doing this because the road to the future of news has been littered with lost datasets. A day or so after every hackathon and meeting where a group has come together to analyze, compare and understand a particular set of data, someone tries to remember where the successful files were stored. Too often, no one is certain.

Miguel Paz, Chilean journalist and founder of Poderopedia, in a missive on the launch of OpenDataLatinoamerica.org

FJP: We are very enthused about this project, and will follow it closely. Go hereto learn more about it.

Univisión takes home an IRE award

Univisión, the US Spanish-speaking broadcasting company, recently won an IRE award in the Broadcast Video category for their in-depth investigation on the Fast and Furious scandal, carried out by journalists Gerardo Reyes, Tomás Ocaña, Mariana Atencio, María Antonieta Collins, Tifani Roberts, Vytenis Didziulis, Margarita Rabin.

After giving the award, the IRE judges had this to say:

In a yearlong investigation, hundreds of classified Mexican documents were obtained with great difficulty under the Mexican public access law. A database of 60,000 entries was combined with US government documents to find 57 previously unreported lost weapons under the “Fast and Furious” program and to show the depth in human cost.

Univision detailed previously unknown crimes committed with those weapons - including the shooting of 14 teens at a birthday party – and uncovered similar U.S. programs in Colombia, Honduras and Puerto Rico that also went awry.

As a result of Univision’s diligence, the Mexican Congress asked for economic compensation for the victims of massacres in which guns from the “Fast and Furious” operation were used.

A public debate erupted in Mexico on how much the Mexican government knew. Congress pressed the U.S. Justice Department for more information, and one U..S Congressman called “Rápido y Furioso” the “Holy Grail” that broke the case.

And this is a fragment of Univisión’s original submission:

Although the hundreds of classified us and Mexican government documents weren’t obtained through a FOI request, we believe our process of gathering and comparing comprehensive information from two different governments, resulted in a story that did “open records and open government” in a unique and revealing way that could not be achieved by simply filing a FOI request.

Bonus: The eight-country collaborative investigative effort Plunder in the Pacific was a runner-up in the Multiplatform category, after revealing how Asian, European and Latin American fleets have devastated what was once one of the world’s great fish stocks (jack mackerel). The project was led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in synergy with Latin American journalists from IDL-Reporteros (Perú) and CIPER (Chile).

Video: Courtesy of Univisión’s news show Aquí y Ahora.

Swallow Mag on Mexico City: flabbergasting!

Swallow has devoted its third issue to our beloved Mexico City, as reported by The New York Times’s Maria Newman in a short introductory blog post.

What is remarkable about this issue, though, apart from the stunning and jaw-dropping photography, is a strange new feature that, in our view, exponentiates the scope of basic written storytelling:

“A scratch-and-sniff feature that brings you the smells of the sprawling metropolis”.

Delicious, or maybe not, depending on your sensibility towards all things chilango. Yet, we kind of wonder if this trend-setting feature will eventually embody the future of travel writing/reporting for print publications; a disruptive device ~~hard~~ impossible to find in digital publications.

Here is the rationale behind that editorial decision:

This time, said James Casey, the magazine’s editor, they decided to include the ambitious olfactory project, put together by Sissel Tolaas, a fragrance expert and artist. Mr. Casey had reached out to Ms. Tolaas after he heard of a project she had done that reproduced the smells from 200 Mexico City neighborhoods.

This issue of Swallow includes 20 scratch-and-sniff stickers throughout that are imbued with the aromas of one of the city’s many colonias, or neighborhoods. (Reproducing the smells in the magazine was a complex undertaking for their printers in Singapore, and is partly the reason it took more than a year to publish.) Not all of the odors are pleasant.

FJP: We can only hope that our fellow Chilanga-in-Portland is not the only one left awestruck:

I knew the Mexico City issue of @swallowmagazine would be unlike anything else out there but I had no idea… Scratch and Sniff? #kickass

— Catherine Manterola (@ManterolaPDX)

April 8, 2013

Images: Assorted local snacks, candies, and pastries. Partial screenshots of Swallow Magazine’s piece on Mexico City’s supermarkets.

Founder of Blog del Narco (MX) breaks silence

The Texas Observer (in collaboration with The Guardian) has a story on the admin of one of the most famous anonymous blogs nowadays: Blog del Narco, a must-read for authorities, drug gangs and ordinary people in Mexico mainly because it lays bare, day after day, horrific violence censored by mainstream media.

Their most breathtaking find? Yes, the blog is operated by a young, brave woman (kind of a big deal for Mexico’s traditional machismo establishment).

The rest of the story is fascinating and provides a much larger context on how the blog works, it is definitely worth your time. Yet, these are our main takeaways:

I don’t think people ever imagined it was a woman doing this. Who am I? I’m in my mid 20s, I live in northern Mexico, I’m a journalist. I’m a woman, I’m single, I have no children. And I love Mexico.

I’m in love with my culture, with my country, despite all that’s going on. Because we’re not all bad. We’re not all narcos. We’re not all corrupt. We’re not all murderers. We are well educated, even if many [foreign] people think otherwise.

We have thought about quitting the blog thousands of times. But we haven’t because we have to get the message out. They have stolen our tranquility, our dreams, our peace.

Only my close family knows, no one else. We change where we live every month. We’ve been in basements. It’s very difficult. We hide our equipment in different places. If the authorities get close we run.

FJP: Follow our Mexico tag for more coverage of the Drug War.

Image: Partial screenshot of Blog del Narco’s first published book Dying for the Truth: Undercover Inside the Mexican Drug War, via Feral House.

Governments and their foreign policy establishments have no alternative but to adapt and adopt new tools. In a 21st century environment, in which “timely” means “real-time”, diplomats and public officials need to be nimble and agile. They need to discern the quality or veracity of information in the torrent of open-source data that flows every second through traditional and social media outlets, and need to understand situations, assess plausible scenarios, and talk and reach-out to key actors.

Arturo Sarukhan, former Ambassador of Mexico to the United States, in a blog post for The Huffington Post about his decision to become the first ambassador accredited to Washington to start tweeting in an official capacity.

According to him, digital diplomacy -and the social media tools used in its instrumentation- need to take into account new processes and practices that are already changing core diplomatic and public policy tasks in three relevant ways:

Listen and analyze. Social media has become one of the greatest tools to gather and analyze information and open source intelligence, and to take stock of developments unfolding in any given nation.
Correct and impact. Social media allows one’s voice to be heard and to confront or change narratives, reporting or spin, and to conduct outreach and cultural diplomacy in an effective and far-reaching manner.
Empower and transform. This is particularly relevant as Foreign Ministries and Embassies try to influence developments on the ground, empower civil society and NGO’s, and foster openness and change.

Caveat: No mention of WikiLeaks.

Journalism, as seen through the eyes of cinema

Silvia Gómez, a video producer currently dwelling in Barcelona, edited this mashup video of random mentions of journalism in at least a dozen films, including some key dialogues (most of them in English with Spanish subtitles). Watch it twice, if you have the chance.

FJP: Which movies can you spot? There are at least a couple of famous ones, and a few more shot originally in Spanish. Nonetheless, of those included, State of Play is probably one of my personal favorites. —Roberto

Source: Silvia Gómez’s vimeo page.

Bloomberg will launch new platform in Mexico and Central America

“Bloomberg Media Group, a division Bloomberg L.P., and El Financiero, the media branch of Grupo Lauman, an integrated solutions company, today announced a long-term agreement to launch a new multi-platform Spanish-language business news service. The companies will create a high-definition television channel that combines Bloomberg’s global business and financial insight with locally-produced content. The service will be offered in Mexico and Central America. The companies also plan to offer content online, on mobile sites and in print with a co-branded section in El Financiero newspaper.”