Punta Cana.- The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) presented tonight the 2025 Awards for Journalistic Excellence, in 12 categories, along with 24 honorable mentions, which highlight the diversity and rigor of the best journalism in the Americas and Spain.
“In times when lies creep into political discourse, when authoritarian governments, both left and right, try to silence criticism, when misinformation spreads like a virus, these journalists present here continue to be the first line of defense of our democracies,” valued María Lorente, president of the SIP Awards Commission and regional director for Latin America of the Agence France-Presse (AFP), at the opening of this ceremony that concluded the third day of the 81st General Assembly of the SIP held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Prior to these awards in the competition, the CEO of Teletica of Costa Rica, René Picado Cozza (Executive of the Year Award), and the editorial director of La Voz del Interior, Carlos Hugo Jornet (Presidential Award), were honored with special awards for their commitment and credibility and as an inspiring example of service.Before presenting the recognition, the president of the Inter American Press Association, José Roberto Dutriz Fogelbach, stated that “during some years of his management of the Commission on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet consolidated the role of the IAPA as the most influential and respected voice in the defense of freedom of expression in the continent”.
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List of award winners:
JOURNALISM AWARD ON MIGRATION “CLAUDIO PAOLILLO”, sponsored by La Silla Rota, MexicoWinner
“Tricked into Sex Slavery: Global Crackdown hasn’t Stopped Caribbean Traffickers” – Natanga Smith, Valerie Fris, Roseann Pile, Soyini Grey, Marion Ali and Freeman Rogers, Caribbean Investigative Journalism Network (Trinidad). For presenting, based on the case of a young Cuban migrant, a shocking and well-founded investigative report denouncing the tragedy of human trafficking in the Caribbean.
First honorable mention.
Second honorable mention
“The Coyote’s Route” – Alberto Pradilla Mar, Carlos Carabaña Ruiz del Árbol, Paul Ramírez, Marcos García, Cecilia Guadarrama, Erick Lizárraga, Rubén Mondragón, Andrea Salinas, Luis Villegas, Iñigo Arredondo Vera and Omar Sánchez de Tagle, N+Focus (Mexico).
CARICATURE AND ILLUSTRATION AWARD, sponsored by El Tiempo, Colombia.
Winner
“Inaugural Speech” [Trump] – Raúl Zuleta, El Espectador (Colombia). For illustrating, in a synthetic way and with excellent mastery of drawing, composition and color, the danger of the vehement speech of the American president.
First honorable mention.
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“O Cerrado e a incrivel jornada das aguas” – Leticia Klein, Luiz Iria, Miguel Vilela Arte, Ronaldo Ribeiro, Sofia Beiras, Rodolfo Almeida, Lucas Alves, Thiago Medaglia, Ambiental Media(Brasil).
Second honorable mention
“Javier Milei” – Juan Colombato, La Nación(Argentina).
NEWS COVERAGE OF CURRENT AFFAIRS AWARD, sponsored by Infobae
Winner
“Interoceanic Corridor: a story of imposition, dispossession and violence” – Diego Prado Alonso, Valente Rosas Pacheco, Omar T. Bobadilla, Irving Morales Agiss, Silber Meza, Antonio Mundaca, Alejandra Mabel Crail Pérez, El Universal (Mexico). For questioning, through a multiplatform coverage, variety of sources, resources and journalistic techniques, the construction project in Mexico of an Interoceanic Corridor, highlighting the environmental and human impacts and the rejection response of the communities.
First honorable mention
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Second honorable mention
“Nobody is looking for my son” – Javier Drovetto, Paula Soler, Jazmín Lell, José E Bordón, Giselle Ferro, Julieta Izzo, Lorena Uribe, Marcelo Manera, Carolina Niklison, Hernán Zenteno, La Nación(Argentina).
“ALEJANDRO MIRÓ QUESADA GARLAND” INTERVIEW AWARD, sponsored by El Comercio, Peru
Winner
“Pepe Mujica: At 20, love is a bonfire. At 80, a sweet habit to shoot at loneliness” – Hugo Alconada Mon, La Nación (Argentina). For presenting, through an intimate dialogue, knowledge of the character and his sociopolitical context, the close and earthly image of a popular political figure in Latin America.
First honorable mention
“Jens Balzer. Cultural appropriation, art and politics: Taylor Swift couldn’t prevent Trump from returning to the White House” – Marcial Héctor Pavón – Ñ/Clarín (Argentina).
Second honorable mention
“María Teresa Arizabaleta: interview with the last suffragist, the woman who achieved women’s suffrage in Colombia” – Diego Leon Giraldo, El Tiempo (Colombia).
PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD, sponsored by La Prensa Gráfica, El Salvador
Winner
“Athlete’s body” – Paulo Miranda Favero, Beatriz Cesarini, Marcelo Maragni, Bruna Sanches, UOL (Brazil). For exposing, with images that are surprising for their beauty, accompanied by personal stories, how the practice of sport sculpts, according to the specificity of each modality, the body of athletes.
First honorable mention
“Emerald leftovers: the dream of poor miners in Colombia” – Luis Cristóbal Acosta, AFP (Colombia).
Second honorable mention
“Ancestral Firefighters” – Marcelo Camargo, Agencia Brasil (Brazil).
CHRONICLE AWARD, sponsored by Debate Media, Mexico
Winner
“Death in San Martín square” – Juan Aurelio Arévalo Miró Quesada, El Comercio (Peru). For reconstructing, using a profusion of data and irrefutable sources, and through a cadenced, immersive and literary prose, a historical crime from almost a century ago in Peru.
First honorable mention
“I went, saw and wrote: the long night train journey to Kiev and the family for a night that destiny gave me” – Hinde Pomeraniec, Infobae (Argentina).
Second honorable mention
“Tears, pain and all the intimacy of the return of the relatives of those fallen in the Malvinas war to the Darwin cemetery” – Pablo Javier Blanco, Clarín (Argentina).
VIDEO AWARD, sponsored by Fundación Carlos Freire, Riobamba, Ecuador
Winner
“The Taliban yoke that suffocates women in the name of Allah” – Carolina Mundi, Luis Almodóvar, El País (Spain). For denouncing, through devastating images and testimonies, the crushing of the rights of women and, in general, of the Afghan population, by the Taliban regime.
First honorable mention
“State of Fear” – Jafet Tirado, José Eduardo Martínez, David Rodríguez Medina, Luis Antonio García, Thais Morales García, Guillermo Blanco, Gemma Cuartielles, N+Media (Mexico).
Second honorable mention
“Malvinas is not archived” – Yair Cybel, Belén del Huerto Romero, Israel Olmedo Ivaldi, Sebastián Matías Furlong, El Grito del Sur (Argentina).
OPINION AWARD, sponsored by El Mercurio, Chile
Winner
“Venezuela against fear” – Luz Mely Reyes, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela) for El País (Spain). For describing the atmosphere of terror in Venezuela, relying, in addition to the journalist’s judgment, on data and testimonies from the victims, while leaving a margin of hope in the midst of immense challenges.
First honorable mention
“Death threats” – José Guarnizo, Vorágine (Colombia).
Second honorable mention
“National Championship of Mandrills” – Alejandro Borensztein, Clarín (Argentina).
DATA AND INFOGRAPHICS JOURNALISM AWARD, sponsored by Grupo de Comunicaciones Corripio, Dominican Republic
Winner
“Projeto Escravizadores” – Amanda Audi, Ana Alice de Lima, Babak Fakhamzadeh, Bianca Muniz, Bruno Fonseca, Bruno Penteado, Catarina Bessel, Danilo Queiroz, Darlene Dalto, Ester Nascimento, Ethieny Karen, Fernanda Diniz, Leandro Aguiar, Leticia Gouveia, Lorena Morgana, Mariama Correia, Marina Dias, Matheus Pigozzi, Matheus Santino, Patrícia Junqueira, Pedro Ezequiel, Rafael Custódio, Rafael Oliveira, Raphaela Ribeiro, Raquel Okamura, Renata Cons, Romeu Loreto, Agência Pública de Jornalismo Investigativo (Brazil). For revealing, through a wide variety of investigative resources, in which genealogy, history and journalism are combined, the historical roots of slavery, which still subsist in the power structures of Brazil.
First honorable mention
“Protected areas of Chile” – Juan Pablo Bravo Zamora, El Mercurio (Chile).
Second honorable mention
“This is how Milei spoke to us” – Nicolás Cassese, Martín Rodríguez Yebra, Martín Pascua, Florencia Rodríguez Altube, Gabriela Bouret, Natalia Louzau, Alejandra Bliffeld, Florencia Abd, María Rodríguez Alcobendas, Pablo Loscri, Gastón de la Llana, Natalia Sarramone, Matías Boela, Julieta Bollini, La Nación (Argentina).
IN-DEPTH JOURNALISM AWARD, sponsored by La República, Peru
Winner
“Toxic Field” – Clemente Álvarez, Javier Figueroa, Andrés Rivera, Amaya Verde, Anna Clare Spelman, Frank Barragán, Diego Medrano, Jessica Weiss, Adriana Loeff, Patricia Clarembaux, Esther Poveda, Federica Narancio, Ana Elena Azpúrua, Univision Noticias Digital (United States). For denouncing and didactically explaining, through data, testimonies, graphics and, above all, visual images, the harmful effects of exposure to pesticides for agricultural workers in the United States, conclusions that can be applied to other countries.
First honorable mention
“Farra do descontos no Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social (INSS)” – Geisiane Sousa, Viviane Novais, Lilian Tahan, Otto Valle, Márcia Delgado, Olívia Meireles, Fabio Leite, Érica Montenegro, Juliana Garcês, Juliana Afioni, Gui Prímola, Gabriel Lucas, Yanka Romão, Daniel Ferreira, Michael Melo, Italo Ridney, André Marques, Luiz Vassallo, Saulo Marques, Metrópoles (Brazil).
Second honorable mention
“The business of the Mayor’s Office of Managua: the urban developer ‘Bismarck Martínez'” – Juan Carlos Bow, Confidencial (Nicaragua).
JOURNALISM AWARD ON THE ENVIRONMENT “ROBERTO EISENMANN Jr.”, sponsored by La Prensa, Panama
Winner
“Our peace is out there” – Thomas Lundy, Canadian Geographic (Canada). For deploying, in a context of impressive beauty of a remote region of Canada, the challenges faced by the Inuit community, expressed in a convincing way by its members, due to environmental threats —derived from mining and climate change—, as well as the solutions put forward by its leaders.
First honorable mention
“Narco contamination: Cooking an environmental disaster” – Ivonne América Armenta Zúñiga, Jesús Antonio Bustamante Rivera, Luis Gerardo Magaña, Katherine Corcoran, Quinto Elemento Lab (Mexico).
Second honorable mention
“A hidden paradise under threat” – Teresa de Miguel, Rodrigo Abd, Megan Janetsky, Caleb Diehl, Peter Hamlin, Anna Jo Bratton, Enric Marti, Carlos Dorantes, Karen Carballo, Kathy Young, Peter Prengaman, Associated Press (Mexico).
UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM AWARD, sponsored by the Latin American Council for Accreditation of Journalism and Communication (CLAEP)
Winner
“Escape in the darkness: the story of the blind parathlete who deserted during Santiago 2023” – Juan José Leyton, Francisco González, Jesús Martínez, Gazi Jalil F., Vergara240, Universidad Diego Portales (Chile). For presenting, with excellent narrative and a high spiritual charge, the moving story of a parathlete, from his childhood in Cuba to his struggle to survive in another country; which was cited in the bill by which the Chamber of Deputies granted Chilean nationality to the immigrant.
First honorable mention
“Following in the footsteps of the Bronx” – María José Lobo Arévalo, María Alejandra Moreno Flórez, Karen Tatiana Carreño Cely, Paula Andrea Triana Herrera, Sarah Shaiel Buitrago Castillo, Natalia Cristina Ariza Pinto, Santiago Ramírez Tolosa, Juana Guzmán Torres, Camilo Andrés Bustos Herrera, Esteban Roldán, María José Beltrán Ariza, Isaac Garzón Rodríguez, Santiago Andrés Ayala Fajardo, Juan Camilo Ferreira Acosta, Conexión Sabana 360, Universidad de la Sabana (Colombia).
Second honorable mention
“Sob o peso do silêncio” – Luiza Cristina de Oliveira Melo, Lucas Lopes, Zanei Ramos Barcellos, Campus Multiplataforma, Universidade de Brasília (Brazil).
