1983

The scholarship was decisive in my career as a journalist. I studied in Chile. I took classes at the Universidad Católica where I began to perfect my Spanish and write freelance articles. After 17 months in Chile UPI offered me work as a correspondent responsible for Peru and Bolivia (and later, Ecuador). I worked there three and a half years. Because of that experience I was hired by the Miami Herald in 1989. The newspaper sent me as its correspondent first to Central America and then to the Andean region for a total of nine years.

My experience in Chile during the dictatorship marked me deeply and even infl uenced a book I published then on the Dalai Lama and strained relations between China and the Tibetans. It wasn’t so much the academics that have served me, rather the experience of living among the Chileans and the frustrations during that era were a real lesson. My professor was among those who allegedly received payments from the CIA during the dictatorship. And the course was called Ethics and Journalism; what could I possibly learn from him?

I owe the beginning of my journalism career to the IAPA. 27 years ago, with generous recommendations by former IAPA scholars, I left the newspaper La Nacion of Buenos Aires, and became a student at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, MO, the oldest in this discipline in the country. The scholarship allowed me to enter into an unknown culture and become familiar with other professional standards. It meant the fi nest preparation to face the changes that were coming: investigative journalism with online media, new precision journalism, digital media. I returned to Argentina with new ideas and a passion for deepening and sharing that knowledge with colleagues. I was a reporter and editor for La Nación and editorial coordinator of the Grupo de Diarios America (GDA).

A new career opportunity appeared when I received the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship. The year spent at Stanford University gave my career the final push into the realm of online media. I worked on the creation and development of the univision.com portal that launched in 2000. I’m still there in what today is called Univision Interactive Media. I live in Miami and, like many colleagues, I race like crazy so I won’t miss the latest “tweet”.

Winning the IAPA scholarship made it possible for me to pursue photojournalism as a graduate student at the University of Missouri (Columbia campus) for two years. At the time I lived and worked in Buenos Aires. I had to decide whether to accept the scholarship or take a position that the AP offered me as photo editor for Mexico and Central America. I opted for the scholarship and I have never regretted my decision. The benefi ts have been mutual: I learned things that I have then been able to offer the IAPA each time I was asked to lead seminars and workshops.

Upon returning to Argentina, for more than two decades I headed the photography department of Diario Popular. Since late 2003 I have been living in France and working since 2006 for the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) as regional chief photographer for France, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Ireland.