Best reporting in any medium on Latin America
AWARD YEAR: 2023
AWARD NAME: 19 The Robert Spiers Benjamin Award 2023
RECIPIENT: Drazen Jorgic, Diego Oré, Jackie Botts, Sarah Kinosian and Stephen Eisenhammer
AFFILIATION: Reuters
HONORED WORK: “Mexico Narcotics”
In a breathtakingly comprehensive series, the Reuters team illustrates the evolution of Mexico-based drug trafficking into a vast fentanyl empire that kills thousands of Americans and rots Mexico’s already fragile institutions from the presidency to the army and the remittance financial system. The series ties together numerous themes underlying this criminal enterprise and digs up hard facts to expose fresh examples of the corruption that feeds it. The reporters make meticulous and exhaustive use of freedom-of-information laws and data-based graphics. They venture into the compounds of the Sinaloa cartel at great personal risk, and into often-impenetrable boardrooms of financial institutions that turn a blind eye to the flow of cartel profits through their accounts.
Links to the winning work:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-drugs-chapitos/
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/MEXICO-DRUGS/FENTANYL/dwvkadblovm/
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/amid-us-pressure-fentanyl-mexico-raises-drug-lab-raids-data-2023-03-17/
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/under-us-pressure-over-fentanyl-mexico-wages-imaginary-war-drugs-with-raids-2023-12-21/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-drugs-remittances/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-politics-blanco/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mexico-usa-guns/
Citation for Excellence:
Julie Turkewitz and Federico Rios
The New York Times
“Profiting Off Migrants”