Bogotá (EFE).- The Teatro Colón in Bogotá seated hundreds of Ibero-American journalists in its historic seats who attended the Gabo Awards ceremony and saw journalism that “raises its voice” as the great winner of the night.
Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Spain; social protests, memory, corruption, sexual violence and the environment were the countries and the winning themes of an evening widely celebrated among communication professionals and as part of the XI Gabo Festival that began this Friday.
Spanish in all its accents was heard in the halls of the theater in the Colombian capital, which for the second consecutive year hosts the Gabo Festival, being aware that “even though it is full, there are many missing”, as recalled by the Argentine illustrator and entertainer Darío Adanti, founder of Revista Mongolia, who started the night with a monologue.
Of the 1,943 works presented, 15 were the finalists in the 5 categories of the award -Text, Coverage, Image, Photography and Audio-, as “a demonstration that journalism of excellence is done in Latin America”, celebrated the director of the Gabo Foundation Jaime Abello Banfi.
racism and violence
The Text award stayed in Colombia, for the first time, thanks to a story by Beatriz Valdés for El Espectador about the racism and sexual violence suffered by Afro-Colombian women in the context of the conflict. Valdés asked to continue telling these stories so that “the need for reparation materializes.”
“Ayacucho: X-ray of homicides”, a story that questions ten deaths in the context of the protests in Ayacucho (Peru) in December 2022, by Rosa Laura and César Prado Malca for IDL Reporters, was the winner of the category Image, which awarded “one of the greatest challenges” of the careers of its authors.
Environment, memory and corruption
An investigation into the agro-industrial elite of Brazil that raises cattle on large farms in the Amazon violating environmental and labor regulations was awarded in Coverage, a work that its authors dedicated to “all the people who live and work to keep the forest standing.” .
“Hold on narrative journalism, and hold on in America”, proclaimed the Audio winners with the podcast “Costa Nostra”, produced by La Maldita for Amazon Music (Spain) and which shows the hidden side of the Mediterranean Costa del Sol.
The Spanish photojournalist Santi Donaire thanked “the families that open the window of the past, of memory, to let the air in” after receiving the Gabo Award in the Photography category for his work of more than six years dedicated to documenting the consequences of the crimes and violations of human rights committed during the Franco regime.
The tributes of the night
For her part, Honduran journalist Jennifer Ávila received the Gabo Prize Recognition of Excellence award from the American chronicler Jon Lee Anderson, becoming the youngest to receive it, and said that “journalism has been a therapy against oblivion ”.
The French journalist Jean-François Fogel, who chaired the Governing Council until his death on March 19, was also honored for being one of the pioneers of the digital transformation of journalism and a great visionary of the trade.
In addition, during the gala, the conviction in Guatemala of the journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, founder of El Periódico and one of the main critics of the governments of that country, was rejected. Zamora was sentenced to six years in prison on June 14 in a heavily criticized trial full of irregularities.
His son José Zamora attended the Gabo Award ceremony to denounce that “journalists and critical voices who denounce corruption, human rights violations and abuses of power are persecuted.” “In Guatemala, doing journalism is a crime,” he lamented.
The curtain of these awards, which are delivered as part of the Gabo Festival that began this Friday and will end on Sunday, was lowered in Bogotá already thinking about the year of journalistic work that is ahead and that will serve as a stimulus, once again, for celebrate the best Ibero-American reports.