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 » I am a journalist with a strong interest in Latin America. My work in Spanish and English has appeared in publications in Argentina, Chile and the United States. This is a brief account of my career, which began over ten years ago in my hometown of Posadas, Argentina.

Diego at Pulitzer's school in 2002  ++  PHOTO: Belén López Garrido

n April 13, 1997, I started working at my hometown newspaper El Territorio (read stories), three months before graduating from Journalism school at Universidad Nacional de Misiones. A week later, I joined FM Universidad radio station as a producer and reporter. I've been a professional journalist ever since.

After winning two national contests for young journalists --one in print (read story) , the other one in TV as part of a team representing UNaM (read story)--, I realized I could aspire to move to Buenos Aires, the nation's biggest media market, in search of an opportunity. Not many journalists from Misiones, my province, have managed to do that succesfully -- so it was a risky move.

 got a chance to do just that when I won a six-month fellowship at Clarín, the world's biggest newspaper in Spanish, and Universidad Católica Argentina. There, I worked on the crime and general news beats, one highlight being my coverage of the case known in the U.S. as The Yosemite Murders -- where one of the three female victims was Silvina Pelosso, an Argentinean teenager on vacation (read stories).

After my Clarín experience, I stayed in the Argentinean capital looking for a job, at a time when national unemployment was in the double digits. It would take me nine months to find a full-time position. In the meantime, I freelanced for several publications, including magazines covering subjects as varied as general interest, rock 'n roll and information technology and marketing (read stories).

In December 1999, I joined Diarios y Noticias, a national wire service, where I was assigned to the night desk as a general and breaking news reporter (read stories). I also wrote features on occasion.

About 2 years old, circa 1978  ++  PHOTO:  Unidentified relative

On December 19, 2001, I was eyewitness to the start of two days of riots and looting when thousands of Argentineans flooded Plaza de Mayo square to demand the resignation of then-President Fernando De la Rúa. On a day off, I had volunteered for work and then stayed put until 5 a.m. It was a night when we had to shut down the newsroom's windows to prevent tear gas from spewing inside while, eight stories below, police chased protesters down the street.

y then, I was ready for a change. I found it when I was admitted to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. After taking courses like cross-cultural reporting, narrative writing, and online journalism, I graduated with honors in May 2003. My master's project, The First Alcalde of New York City, was a 9,307-word article on the possibility of Fernando Ferrer's becoming the first Latino mayor in the city. I would return to that subject two years later, when I wrote several stories about Ferrer's 2005 unsuccesful campaign. (Read the one published on VNY)

After graduation, I entered a one-year internship program at The Star-Ledger, the biggest newspaper in New Jersey. My beat was the city of Elizabeth, pop. 120,000, with over 50 percent Hispanic inhabitants (read stories). Among other stories, I took part in the coverage of the Staten Island ferry crash on October 16, 2003 and authored an investigative piece about a fake architect who deceived several families around the state.

Since then, I stayed in New York, where I freelanced for magazines and newspapers in Chile, Argentina and the U.S. I was a regular contributor to the New York Daily News, both in Spanish and English.

Between 2006 and 2007, I went back to school, this time at New York University. There, I obtained a Master's degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, concentrating on Latin American politics and 20th century history. My goal was improving my ability to cover U.S.-Latin American relations at every level.

As soon as I completed my coursework -and thesis-, I left New York after five and a half years there. I moved to Mexico City to take a job as a managing editor at Gatopardo, a Latin American magazine that is dedicated to high-quality narrative journalism.