Drawing the Line: Photographing the Drug War in Mexico
Honk if You Love Peaceful Protests
In recent months, protesters in Brazil have taken a new approach to oppose what they see as poor governance by the state, focusing on the excessive spending on FIFA World Cup projects. Pulitzer Center student fellow Jawad Wahabzada from Wake Forest University captures a scence of protesters’ shouting and sympathizers’ honking horns. The protest is a peaceful attempt to annoy Governor Sergio Cabral’s so that he will reconsider his position. Learn more about Occupy Cabral here.
Homa Tavangar and Paul Salopek spoke with NPR’s Tell Me More today about using #edenwalk as a gateway to global education in the classroom. Listen to the interview above.
Tavangar is a Pulitzer Center education advisor and the author of Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World. Paul Salopek is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is walking around the world in a 7-year slow journalism experiment. Salopek is the focus of the cover story of the December issue of National Geographic. Learn more about how to use the walk in your classroom here.
Educational Resources for Teachers: Out of Eden Walk
In one of journalism’s boldest (and longest) endeavors, Paul Salopek is trekking 21,000 miles across the globe in the path of our migrating ancestors. This seven-year walk, called “Out of Eden,” will take him from Ethiopia to Patagonia, passing through more than 30 countries along the way. (Read more about his journey in the December issue of National Geographic.)
Salopek will pass through the cultures and lives of people who rarely make the news to reveal the major stories of our time — from climate change to technological innovation, from mass migration to cultural survival, from water shortages to women’s rights. Amidst the rush of information in the digital age, Salopek will document these stories through the slow pace of his footsteps.
With more than 350 reporting projects that address the issues touched on in the Walk, the Pulitzer Center is a deep resource for educators who would like to explore these issues in their classes. Below are some subject areas with specific reporting connections.
WATER
Although water accessibility and sanitation are especially pressing now, they’ve also been a constant battle throughout human history. Paul Salopek encountered this battle early in his journey when he learned just how heavy (and necessary) it is to lug water, at a whopping nine pounds per gallon, through the deserts of Saudi Arabia, and the unquenchable thirst that so many humans have to endure on a daily basis in hot desert regions.
His travels will continue to explore the issues surrounding water accessibility and sanitation, a topic that Pulitzer Center grantees have explored in-depth. Recent Pulitzer Center projects that connect to water issues include water rights in Nepal along the Koshi river, the paradox between Botswana’s diamond and water resources, and the impact of gas extraction on water resources from Poland to Pennsylvania.
See more projects on water in our Downstream, Waiting for Water, andOcean Health Gateways.
FOOD INSECURITY
Another major theme of Salopek’s travels will surround food and agriculture, as he explores in his post about Saudi fishermen and the decline of the fish population in recent years. A similar project by Erik Vance and Dominic Bracco II explored the Sea of Cortez, which was once lush, vast, and filled with fish. Now, tuna, red snapper and shark are all but gone.
Meanwhile Sharon Schmickle and local Tanzanian journalists explored thetension over food insecurity in Africa. Sharon’s main article was published in The Washington Post and discusses the fight over whether or not to genetically modify crops in Africa. Local journalists wrote about women farmers, drought issues, and more. Their articles were published in theDes Moines Register.
See more projects on food insecurity in our Food Insecurity Gateway.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Paul will be trekking across all different parts of the globe, including areas where Pulitzer Center journalists have gone to report on climate change. For example, Justin Catanoso’s reporting focused on climate change in the rainforest. While most climate change reporting focuses on cold weather climates, Catanoso wanted to focus on the tropics, as discussed in hisNational Geographic article, “Peru: We’re Living in the Tropics.” Catanoso produced a radio series on his work, featured on WFDD.
Meanwhile Sean Gallagher, another Pulitzer Center grantee, focused onClimate Change and Environmental Degradation on the Tibetan Plateau. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, National Georgraphic and The Guardian. The Pulitzer Center also made his work into a e-book, “Meltdown: China’s Environmental Crisis" which you can buy today.
Yves Eudes traveled to multiple countries to report on the melting arctic. His work took him to Norway, Russia, Alaska and more. All articles were featured in Le Monde.
See more projects on climate change in our Heat of the Moment Gateway.
POPULATION
Paul may be tracing the first steps of humans, but the population has grown since then. The Pulitzer Center has a population gateway that focuses on the issue of rapid population growth. Ken Weiss looks directly at the impact rapid population growth around the globe in his project “Beyond 7 Billion.” He believes contraception is the key to reducing child and maternal death. His work has been published in The Los Angeles Times.
Tom Hundley, the Pulitzer Center’s senior editor, and Dan McCarey, the Pulitzer Center’s Web Developer, created a project entitled “Roads Kill.”More than 1.2 million are killed on the world’s roads each year—and that number is increasing rapidly. If nothing is done to reverse this trend, the annual death toll is on course to triple by 2030. Journalists from the Pulitzer Center’s extensive network have been reporting on traffic safety around the world; Yochi Dreazen from Mali, Tom Hundley from Jakarta, Lauren Bohn from Egypt. Paul Salopek discusses Tafheet or “drifting,” which is an underground motorsport particular to the Middle East at the turn of the millennium, in his reporting.
See more projects on population in our Population Gateway.
RELIGION
While traveling, Paul Salopek will encounter many different types of cultures and beliefs. In Saudi Arabia, Salopek wrote about Eve’s grave. Pulitzer Center grantee Tariq Mir’s project “Kashmir: The Rise of Hard Faith" discusses faith and religion. His articles have been published in theBoston Review and Fountain Ink.
TECHNOLOGY/DIGITALIZATION
"I’ll be traversing what is probably the greatest transformation in human consciousness since the invention of agriculture: the wiring of the world," explains Paul. "Today, about a third of humankind is interconnected through information technology, primarily via mobile devices, to the Web. By the time I plod onto a finish-line beach in Tierra del Fuego in 2020,that connectivity will be complete.”
Pulitzer Center journalists have learned to use technology to their advantage. Two student fellows, Jennifer Gonzalez and Steven Matzker, both used their iPhones to shoot photographs while reporting on water rights in Nepal, but make the point that "it’s what and how the photographer sees, not what the photographer uses.". Sharon Schmicklereports on the use of mobile phones in rural African villages. Technology is making wind energy more accessible for Brazil, as reported by Juan Forero.
Good journalism takes time. The Pulitzer Center invests in stories that take weeks, months, and sometimes years, to complete. While Salopek walks the earth, the Pulitzer Center is looking forward to connecting his reports, and those of our other journalists, to students and educators. As much ground as one man can cover in seven years - approximately 21,000 miles for Paul - there will always be more to learn and discover about the pressing issues of our time.
— Paris Achenbach and Rebecca Gibian
“It’s safer to work in the terma,” says Juliana, a 31-year-old bleach-blonde with a face younger than her years. “There are security guards, doctors and you know you’ll get paid. When I work here it’s like being on the street—I might be raped.”
Under the neon-green lighting of Balcony Bar—Copacabana’s premier sex tourism spot—Juliana sips away at the caipirinha I offered in exchange for 15 minutes of her time. She explains how Rio’s termas—brothels—have been raided by the police over the past year, forcing those who sell sex for a living to work elsewhere.
Juliana does not like to work at the bar and instead prefers one of Rio’s more upscale “saunas,” Centaurus [in the news earlier this month after the alleged visit by singer Justin Bieber]. This is despite the 12-hour shifts and steep fines for missing a day of work. It was a friend who first took her there, recommending it as a safe place to work and make good money. She was 23 and had recently lost her job at a bingo hall after the halls were outlawed by the government in a move to curb political corruption (halls were believed to be fronts for organized crime and money laundering). Juliana now has an eight-month-old son and explains that minimum wage is not enough to feed, clothe and care for them both.
Until last year, Centaurus was a relatively safe place to work. But on June 14, 2012, Rio’s public prosecutor’s officers arrived, armed with members of the Copacabana Police Precinct, and rounded up prostitutes, staff and the owner. They seized $150,000 in cash before leaving.
Juliana was in Centaurus when it was raided but luckily was with a client and managed to escape arrest. She later heard that the police filmed the raid, threatening to leak the footage to the local media thereby exposing the women’s identities unless they handed over more money. Thaddeus Blanchette, an anthropologist who has documented prostitution in Rio since 2004, is not surprised by this. “Blackmail accompanying raids is not uncommon,” he reveals. “It is one of the reasons why I am skeptical of using the police as neutral agents in the combating of trafficking.”
Centaurus was one of over 20 popular sex venues to be shut down in the period surrounding the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012. Raids continue to take place across Rio as Brazil steps up its image-cleansing campaign ahead of the World Cup. The crackdown is taking place despite the fact that exchanging sex for money is legal in Brazil and prostitution has been recognized as an official occupation by the Ministry of Labor since 2002.
Although prostitution is technically legal, profiting from it (by operating a brothel) is not — a point not wholly forgotten by Brazilian authorities. Until recently the police turned a blind eye for the right price but, with the World Cup on its way, raids are being carried out with the additional justification of tackling “criminal activity.” Sexual exploitation of adolescents, money laundering and drug-related activity have all been listed as reasons for the raids with no clear signs of evidence. Similar justifications were used by police in London’s historic red light district in October.
Human rights activists believe that brothel raids are part of a much wider effort to sanitize Brazil’s image. “It’s all about cleaning the city,” says Amnesty International Human Rights Advisor Renata Neder, who believes that Rio is following in the footsteps of other mega-event host cities (such as New Delhi and Beijing) by attempting to conceal its “undesirable elements.” “The city is not seen as a place to live, work or have social relations. It’s seen as a commodity. So when you apply this logic you need to hide the elements that you think make your product less valuable: the slums, homeless people, prostitutes, informal workers and drug addicts.”
One does not have to look far to see the effects of this “hygienist” policy. The Tourism Ministry has already clamped down on more than 2,000 websites that promote Brazil as a sex tourism destination. There have been reports of prostitutes being threatened with 15 years in prison for advertising their services in public pay phones. Countless other “unsightly” groups have been forcibly displaced, sometimes up to 70 kilometers from the downtown areas where they make their living. Renata is concerned that these evictions will continue to pile up as Brazil accelerates its preparations for the World Cup and foreign investments pour in.
For those working in Rio’s sex industry, the World Cup and the accompanying foreign investment is a double-edged sword. According to the Brazilian Tourist Board, 600,000 visitors are expected to come to Brazil for the World Cup. Like many other Brazilian prostitutes, Juliana intends to capitalize on the opportunity by working six days a week at Centaurus (which re-opened shortly after the Rio+20 media hype subsided).
Yet, accompanying the World Cup are the government’s urban regeneration policies and “cleansing” campaigns. Juliana knows that by working at the brothel she is risking arrest and public humiliation. But the alternative is no better. Working on the streets and in bars and hotel rooms brings different but equally serious risks: Without the relative security of the brothel, women like Juliana risk being attacked or raped.
— Keep reading here. Story and image by Pulitzer Center student fellow Lauren Wilks.
Student Fellow Reporting Highlights
“She went back to her village and decided to live as if nothing had happened. Four years later, she was married. She said her husband didn’t know anything about her past and she will always keep that a secret.” Lusha Chen, Boston University’s student fellow, was speaking of a Burmese woman who had escaped after she was sold to a Chinese bachelor. Last Friday Lusha showed a clip from her film on human trafficking in Burma to a group of BU students, many of them prospective applicants for the Pulitzer Center fellowship. She was joined by Kerstin Egenhoffer from BU’s School of Public Health, who had traveled to Malawi to report on a form of poverty alleviation using cash transfers—grants with no strings attached. Cutting out the middleman works—but selecting the recipients isn’t always an easy process.
Lusha and Kerstin were two of the 21 student fellows from our partner universities who received international reporting fellowships. What follows is a glimpse at some of their work:
Women’s Rights and Water Rights
Varsha Ramakrishnan, from Johns Hopkins, traveled to India to report on “dowry violence,” perpetrated by husbands on their wives in an attempt to extort higher payments. George Washington University’s Eleanor Klibanoff reports on the effects of strict abortion laws in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Melisa Goss from South Dakota State University looks at human trafficking, the sex trade and tourism in Cambodia—Lauren Wilks, our Amnesty International student fellow, deals with the same issue in a story on brothel raids in Rio.
Linda Qiu from the University of Chicago chose to write on water issues: “In Botswana, diamonds aren’t forever. And neither is the supply of groundwater.” Nick Swyter from the University of Miamiinvestigates the effects of a proposed dam on the Ngabe indigenous people in Panama. Steve Matzker and Jennifer Gonzalez, from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, show how visions of hydropower can threaten a way of life in Nepal.
Health and Sanitation
Jon Cox, the student fellow from Davidson College, reported from India on affordable healthcare. In investigating both public and private hospitals he asked, “Why is aid failing to reach those who need it most?” University of Pennsylvania student fellow Luke Messac examined the inter-connectedness of currency devaluation, user fees, and the quality of healthcare in Malawi. He also touched on the difficulties faced by doctors there: As one clinician puts it, “The books do not describe how long the ambulance will take.” Diksha Bali, also from the University of Pennsylvania, looked at stolen trash bins, open defecation, political power plays, and waste management in Ghana.
Struggling Farmers and Student Protesters
Kassondra Cloos and Rachel Southmayd from Elon University studied the success of a cooperative organic farm in Cuba. Davidson College’s Adrian Fadil has started a project on sustainable farming in Palestine and the budding fair trade olive oil industry.
Two student fellows traveled to South America to follow the student protests for “education as a citizen’s right”— Loyola University Chicago’s Shirley Coenen in Chile and Wake Forest’s Jawad Wahabzada in Brazil. “There is the education that the wealthy receive and then there is the education that poor people receive – they are two completely different educations,” a Chilean university dean explained.
From the U.K.
High Point University’s Henry Molski looked into separation anxiety as he interviewed Scots on their views on independence—a year before the upcoming referendum. Cate Schurz, from Guilford College, questioned whether justice was served or jeopardized in the case of the Stephen Lawrence murder in Britain—a story pitting together racial tension and technological advances. Reporting on peace walls in Belfast that separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, Devon Marie Smith from Westchester Community College interviews those who want to keep them up and others ready to tear them down.
Thanks to all the student fellows for the great reporting. We’ll spotlight more of their stories in the weeks to come.
ZoomLion is Ghana’s largest private waste management company. It was established in 2006, less than 10 years after Ghana instituted its Public Private Partnership Policy (PPP) on waste management.
The PPP was introduced due to spiraling population growth and an increase in waste that local governments were finding it difficult to deal with. As per the PPP, the Ghanaian government handed over the majority of waste management services to private companies in the late 1990s.
Private waste management companies hire people to sweep the main streets and gutters every day. They also manage dumping grounds and collect waste directly from homes and establishments.
In the slideshow above, watch ZoomLion clean up Agona’s streets and learn more about their employees’ role in keeping Ghana clean.
— Pulitzer Center student fellow Diksha Bali
After years of abusing her, Saraswati’s husband abandoned her and their three kids. She talks about her experience with dowry violence, and how she has overcome it, to student fellow Varsha Ramakrishnan.
Saraswati’s oldest son [on the left] just began college and dreams of playing on the Indian Cricket team someday. Image by Arjun Suri. India, 2013.
Truth-Telling in Sri Lanka
Leaders of former British colonies gather in Sri Lanka this week for a meeting that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa intended as a multi-million-dollar exercise in self-promotion. Thanks in part to Pulitzer Center grantee Callum Macrae it is becoming instead an opportunity to confront Rajapaksa on his government’s brutal suppression of Tamil separatists in 2009.
Callum’s film, “No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,” has sparked demonstrations in India and in Malaysia a human rights group faces criminal charges just for showing the film. But the message is getting through: Indian Prime Minister Mammohan Singh announced this weekend that he will boycott the meeting, as is Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. British Prime Minister David Cameron is still set to go but issued this remarkable tweet:
PM: Been watching @NoFireZoneMovie. Chilling documentary on Sri Lanka. Serious questions to put to @PresRajapaksa next week.
— UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) November 9, 2013
Cameron’s tweet is a reminder of the impact of journalism done right, how it can change minds and drive actions even at the highest reaches of government power.
Grantee photographer Tomas van Houtryve spoke with 13 classes across DC this past week, reaching some 400 students in grades 5 to 12 and sharing his amazing work along the border of North and South Korea. Then he went on to Philadelphia and reached 700 more—students and also 70 teachers from public and private schools who attended a workshop aimed at building an education community around Pulitzer Center reporting projects.
Tomas’s work was featured at FotoWeekDC along with photographs of the U.S./Mexico border by grantee Louie Palu. Tomas and Louie led a discussion of their work at the exhibit site and both came to our offices for a talks@pulitzer presentation that also featured grantee Greg Constantine. Greg’s work on the Rohingya, the stateless people of Burma, was projected all week on the exterior walls of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In the photographers’ class visits we were struck, as always, by the diverse mix of issues raised and questions asked. At DC’s Plummer Elementary fifth graders had so many questions about North Korea that they were literally jumping up from their seats: “Do they have video games in North Korea?” they asked. “Chapter books?” “Washing machines?” “Sports?” “Why do they don’t like certain countries?”
Youngest Veterans
Today, as we honor the service of U.S. veterans, it is also fitting to reflect on a group we don’t often associate with war—the tens of thousands of children around the world forced to become soldiers. Contributing editor Kem Knapp Sawyer, in a keynote speech to 130 middle schoolers at the Fall Model UN Conference in Washington DC, spoke about former child soldiers “who have the resilience to begin again.” She singled out grassroots organizations that provide much-needed support. “Their approach is a holistic one—healing the body but also healing the soul.“
Until next week,
Jon Sawyer
Executive Director
Modern Day Slavery
"Slavery Isn’t a Thing of the Past," Nick Kristoff writes in last Thursday’s New York Times. He tells us the Global Slavery Index counts 60,000 “modern slaves” in the U.S. and 30 million throughout the world with the greatest number in India. Channeling William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano he talks about how to make way for modern emancipation.
Two Pulitzer Center student fellows have done their own research into modern slavery. Lusha Chen from Boston University photographed and interviewed Kachin women who have been trafficked to China for her project "Burmese Brides Along the Chinese Border." She highlights the work of the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) in assisting women who escape.
Melisa Goss from South Dakota State University writes about sex trade and tourism in Cambodia focusing on the work of World Hope International’s assessment center in Phnom Penh. One 11-year old who came to the center had been raped by her neighbor. “When the girls would draw pictures, she would use only black,” Channery Kao, a counselor, told Melisa.