InSight Crime has won the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Prize in the category of investigative journalism for the text publication “The Informants of Tibú: How the Colombian State Unleashed a Wave of Femicides.”
The investigation, written by Alicia Flórez and Lara Loaiza, was the result of months of work, including extensive field research in Colombia’s Catatumbo region. Tibú, along the border with Venezuela, is home to a patchwork of different illegal actors in one of the world’s top coca-growing and cocaine-producing regions.
Between 2020 and 2021, more than a dozen women were killed, others disappeared, and many more threatened and displaced, after guerrillas operating in the Norte de Santander discovered a plan by the security forces to instrumentalize women and infiltrate them into their ranks.
This is the second time InSight Crime has won a Simón Bolívar, the first time being in 2020 with “The Invisible Drug Lord: Hunting the Ghost,” which detailed the investigation into a drug trafficker who had started his criminal career in the Medellín Cartel and managed to stay hidden for decades.
This latest Simón Bolívar is the third award that InSight Crime has won this year.
In October, InSight Crime received the Maria Moors Cabot Special Citation for our coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean.
“InSight Crime has deepened the understanding of organized crime and its impact across the Americas with on the ground investigative reporting, data analysis, and research about criminal dynamics in the region,” read the citation.
In April, the investigation, “The Moskitia: The Honduran Jungle Drowning in Cocaine” was awarded Spain’s Ortega and Gasset prize. Written by Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson and Bryan Avelar, the Moskitia investigation chronicles how drug trafficking destroys the rainforest and threatens indigenous communities on Honduras’ remote northern coast.
The awards reflect InSight Crime’s deep commitment to telling stories from the ground up, based on exhaustive field research, speaking to all the actors and stakeholders, including the criminals themselves.