Bajo la Lupa

Our Impact

Luis Jiménez — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 17:56:36 +0000

Project

BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE ATLANTIC FOREST

Paraguay’s Eastern region is home to the Atlantic Forest, a vital ecosystem of unique plant and animal species second only to the Amazon and one of the richest natural areas on the planet. But every year deforestation destroys thousands of acres of forest in the region, affecting entire communities and devastating fauna and flora. At the center of this environmental destruction is Brazilian agribusinessman Ulises Rodriguez Teixeira.

Read our investigative report

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Mexican journalists awarded Bajo la Lupa 2021 investigative reporting grant

Luis Jiménez — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 19:34:01 +0000

Mexican journalists awarded Bajo la Lupa 2021 investigative reporting grant

Abraham Rubio

Marco Antono López

Juan Luis García

Nayeli Valencia

Bajo la Lupa has awarded a 2021 investigative reporting grant to a team of Mexican journalists whose winning proposal outlines a detailed portrait of the Mexican military, which has become the right hand of the Mexican presidency and an important ally to the United States in the fight against drug cartels.

The journalists are founders of the independent online news site Aguamala.mx, based in Mexico City and at the U.S.-Mexico border, that conducts in-depth reporting on national events made compelling by narrative storytelling.

The members of the team are:

Juan Luis García, who has reported in Mexico, Guatemala and the United States. He was the first international fellow at The Texas Tribune and he also received a 2018 fellowship from the Alfred Friendly Foundation at the Missouri School of Journalism. In Mexico, he has been a news and investigative reporter for SinEmbargo.mx, Cuestione.com and EconomiaHoy.mx.

Marco Antonio López, who was part of the investigative journalism team for the documentary, “The three deaths of Marisela,” which premiered on Netflix in 2020. His work has been published by national and international media organizations such as El Universal, Newsweek en Español, La Silla Rota and Huffington Post en Español. He is also the author of the book, By the river, this desert.

Abraham Rubio, an independent journalist who has written about politics, human rights, social issues and the economy for publications in Mexico City and at the U.S.-Mexico border. His work has appeared in El Diario de Juárez, Pie de Página, La Verdad Juárez, El Pais, El Universal, Huffington Post and La Silla Rota.

Nayeli Valencia, a photojournalist who is focused on independent journalism. She collaborated on the book, Faces in the dark. Earthquake 19S, and now works with the team at Aguamala.

In response to our call for proposals, Bajo la Lupa received numerous investigative project ideas from Latin American journalists on issues ranging from human trafficking to deforestation to the clash of politics and science. Our international panel of judges singled out the proposal by the Mexican team, which focuses on the complex, secretive and rarely investigated Mexican military.

The judges said the team’s proposal “stood out for its bold approach to investigating the Mexican military.”

The proposal “offers an opportunity to write a detailed portrait of the Mexican military, which has long been considered an institution that Mexicans trust as much or more than the Catholic Church. The Aguamala proposal aims to upend that thinking by showing with names and details how the military and its leaders have betrayed that trust and violated their oaths in ways that have cost lives,” the judges said.

The project will be published in late 2021.

Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna, a Mexican journalist, reporter, editor and media director, will be the project editor.

He has been editor-in-chief of the magazine Milenio Semanal, editorial director of the newspaper El Universal, and founder and CEO of the magazine Emeequis (2006-2018). He has worked as a reporter at El Financiero and the newspaper Reforma. And he is a founding associate of Quinto Element Lab.

The editorial teams working under Rodríguez Reyna’s guidance and supervision have won more than 55 national and international awards.

Bajo la Lupa was founded by InquireFirst in 2020 with a generous contribution by Anthony S. Da Vigo, a California attorney who is committed to improving the lives of Latin Americans.

He has been recognized for providing pro bono legal services for the Refugee Asylum Panel of Sacramento County and for accepting, investigating and winning the case of an El Salvadoran applicant marked for assassination by death squads.

Most recently, he funded the completion of a water project in Nicaragua, providing well water distribution to a church, a school and 65 homes.

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Paraguayan journalist wins first Bajo la Lupa investigative reporting grant

Luis Jiménez — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 19:52:02 +0000

Paraguayan journalist wins first Bajo la Lupa investigative reporting grant

Aldo Benitez

InquireFirst is excited to announce that Paraguayan journalist Aldo Benítez has been awarded our first investigative reporting grant for an environmental project which he will produce as part of our Bajo la Lupa initiative to support investigative journalism by Latin American journalists.

The judges said Benítez’s proposal “addresses matters of great public interest, which in one way or another directly impact people’s lives.”

They described his proposal as a “clear research project, with specific and relevant complaints, from which it can be inferred that the justice system has fallen short in the countries where the stories take place. The informative value of the investigation, the possible transnational impact and the environment in which it takes place make it necessary to provide all the support and collaboration possible to help this project come to fruition.”

Benítez, who is the deputy Sunday editor at La Nación in Paraguay, was hooked on journalism at the age of 19 when he attended a weekly “Young Journalists” program at the prestigious national newspaper in Asunción, ABC Color. He worked at ABC Color for more than a decade, covering the economy and sports. But he said his real interest lay in covering “the rivers, the forests, what was happening with the environment.”

Since joining La Nación in 2016, he has focused on investigative reporting and more recently has found ways to merge investigative and environmental reporting. For the past two years he has collaborated with Mongabay LatAm, an online news site focused on conversation and the environment.

In response to the call for proposals, Bajo la Lupa received numerous investigative project ideas from journalists in Mexico, Guatemala and South America. The panel of judges said that each of the proposals demonstrated the experience and knowledge of the Latin American journalists who participated.

The judges singled out Benítez’s proposal, saying it “has great narrative potential, as well as the possibility to expose environmental damage that has been going on for far too long with impunity.”

“These qualities made this project the winner,” the judges said.

Alejandra Gutiérrez Valdizán, a prominent reporter and editor with experience in written, audiovisual and digital journalism, will serve as project editor. She has focused her career on in-depth and narrative journalism, specializing in issues of human rights, transitional justice, the environment, and security and violence.

Her work, individually or as a team, has been a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Awards (2013), the Gabriel García Márquez Prize of the FNPI (2014), and the Inter-American Press Society (2013/2014). She has been a university professor, teaching investigative journalism courses and instructing workshops and trainings on communication, journalism and editorial and digital media management.

In December 2017, she co-founded Agencia Ocote in Guatemala, where she is the director. At Agencia Ocote she designs, coordinates and edits the journalistic projects of Agencia Ocote and manages the communication, investigation and editorial services of the Servicios Ocote company.

Bajo la Lupa is funded by Anthony S. Da Vigo, a California attorney who has successfully argued immigration cases of Latin American asylum seekers. Most recently, he funded the completion of a water project in Nicaragua, providing well water distribution to a church, a school and 65 homes.

This initiative, launched in June 2020, supports in-depth and original reporting by Latin American journalists to expose corruption and abuses of power. The objective of Bajo la Lupa is to encourage investigative journalism that reveals hidden actions by the powerful that affect the citizens of Latin America with the goal of promoting transparency and rule of law.

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Call For Proposals

Luis Jiménez — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:37:17 +0000

Bajo la Lupa
investigative journalism grant program
for Latin American journalists

Submit Your Proposals For Investigative Journalism Projects

Deadline: June 17, 2021

InquireFirst is accepting proposals for our Bajo la Lupa project, an initiative that supports in-depth and original journalistic investigations to expose corruption and abuses of power with the goal of promoting transparency and the rule of law in Latin America. Bajo la Lupa provides financial and editorial support and generates a media network for the dissemination of research.

InquireFirst, a nonprofit journalism organization founded in 2016 in San Diego, California, organizes workshops in Spanish and awards grants for investigative journalism projects written by Latin American journalists.

The long-term effect of our journalism programs at InquireFirst is to build close collaboration with journalists from Latin America to strengthen journalism and give citizens the information they need to make better decisions.

The purpose of Bajo la Lupa is to encourage investigative journalism that seeks to reveal hidden actions of the powerful that affect the citizens of Latin American countries.

We invite journalists to propose an investigative journalism project that they can research, write and edit in a period of no more than six months.

The selected projects will receive financial support for reporting conducted in 2021.

The deadline for submitting proposals is June 17, 2021 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time.

All journalists applying for a Bajo la Lupa grant are required to complete an InquireFirst questionnaire when submitting the project. The questionnaire can be found below this text.

The project will be edited by editor Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna, an experienced newspaper editor who is based in Mexico. The chosen journalists will be expected to comply with the schedule for the editing and publication. There will be a calendar for the editing process, as well as a non-negotiable deadline. As many corrections and modifications will be made as necessary during the editing process.

The winner agrees to give credit to the InquireFirst, as well as the editor Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna and the graphic design and interpretation teams in all publications and communications where the winning work is mentioned.
Eligibility: Bajo la Lupa is open to any journalist who works or frequently collaborates with a newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online medium in Latin America, or who works as a freelance journalist. Those who work in public relations or as spokespersons for institutions are not eligible to apply for a grant from Bajo la Lupa.

Distribution: The projects will be published by media in Latin America and the United States. Editor Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna and Project Director Lynne Walker will work with media organizations to ensure that the projects have the widest possible distribution.

The project will be submitted in Spanish to the editor and translated into English for publication in the US media and into Portuguese for publication in Brazil.

To ensure credibility and fairness, an international panel of three judges will select the winning team. The decision of the judges on the winning project will be final.

Applications must include the following:

• The attached questionnaire with the description of the project. You can find a link to the questionnaire below this text.

• A preliminary estimated budget (not to exceed US $2,000 per project), which includes a basic breakdown of ground transportation and reporting expenses. The budget may also include compensation for journalists working on the project.

• A biography, with a maximum length of 300 words per biography, with three links to publications in which you have participated.

Deadline: June 17, 2021 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

The selected project will be announced in July 2021.

Questions? Email Lynne Walker

Open questionnaire

Close questionnaire

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