Dozens of journalists have learned to broaden drug coverage beyond trafficking and criminalization through a mentorship initiative that is about to launch its seventh edition.
Four years ago, reporter Valentina Parada Lugo was reporting in Nariño, the Colombian region with the highest coca production, when she began hearing stories from women who cook and clean for workers on coca farms.
Parada Lugo had experience covering drug eradication efforts in the department of Nariño, but this was the first time she encountered women who, although they were not directly involved in drug production, could face the full force of government crackdowns on drug traffickers. They earned low wages and regularly faced sexual harassment and violence.
Parada Lugo turned those stories into two dispatches for El País in 2024 that went beyond the usual drug trafficking narratives of villains and victims to examine the lives of women under precarious conditions. She did so after participating in the Fund for Investigations and New Narratives on Drugs(opens in new tab), or FINND, which challenges journalists to rethink how they cover drug trafficking.
En Colombia, la mitad de las mujeres judicializadas lo están por delitos asociados al narcotráfico. Pero, lejos de ser un país de "Griseldas", la mayoría ejercen las labores más frágiles, como ser las trabajadoras domésticas de los cocales.
Estas son #LasCocinerasDelCocal pic.twitter.com/UxvY5iRm1U— Valentina Parada Lugo (@valentinaplugo) September 15, 2024
“The story took on a different tone because I also tried to look at the choices these women make, the role they play in the chain of illicit economies, and how they see themselves,” Parada Lugo told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “Simply questioning those paradigms that we operate from is very interesting, and I think it is difficult to do.”
FINND, organized by Fundación Gabo and Open Society Foundations, has allowed dozens of journalists across Latin America to explore new ways of reporting on drugs, a topic that intersects with health, education, the environment and poverty. With nearly 90 investigations published by journalists who participated in the program, FINND has helped “detoxify” the narrative surrounding drug coverage, program editorial coordinator Guillermo Garat told LJR.
“Unfortunately, journalism has this weakness of chasing [drug] seizures and official statements, following a classic narrative that offers us a very biased view,” Garat said. “We need to unlearn what we have been taught and start looking these people and affected communities in the eye, and understand other ways of interpreting this reality.”
The program’s seventh edition will focus on drug coverage in Colombia and Mexico. The application deadline is Sept. 9(opens in new tab).
Changing the narrative does not mean romanticizing the drug phenomenon, but rather broadening the lens through which it is viewed, according to Miguel Montes, programs director at Fundación Gabo.
“Coverage free from stigma, prejudice and criminalization can delve into those other issues, those other perspectives,” Montes told LJR. “But it must always be based on evidence and verified facts.”
Neldy San Martín, editorial director of Mexican outlet Causa Natura Media and a participant in the latest edition of FINND, said the program helped her reflect on how to better tell the stories of the most vulnerable people in the drug-production chain, who are often grouped with major criminals despite living in situations of marginalization and neglect.
San Martín and her colleagues Diego Legrand and Lenin Ocampo produced a video report, “Paraquat, the Invisible Poison of Mexico’s War on Drugs”(opens in new tab), which was published by Mexican news magazine Proceso in June. It examines the effects of using the herbicide on farming communities in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
“This work helps us put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, because we don’t know what we would do in a similar situation of poverty, neglect and institutional abandonment,” San Martín told LJR. “As a journalist, it is a challenge to capture that in a video or a text, and the Fund helped me use the right words so that through the narrative, people can perceive and understand the context.”
Parada Lugo, meanwhile, produced two stories, “An Invisible and Abused Occupation: The Women Who Cook on Coca Farms”(opens in new tab) and “‘In the Logic of Drug Trafficking, Women in the Business Are Easily Replaceable.’”(opens in new tab) The first examines how women who feed workers on coca farms survive sexual violence and economic hardships. The second looks at the moral, social and criminal punishments imposed on women involved in the illegal drug trade.
Both San Martín’s and Parada Lugo’s reports put people who are normally left out of the discussion at the center of their stories, Garat said.
“It is an ethical challenge not to portray victims only as victims, but also to consider their place in the chain, their political role in the region and their agency as women who are the heads of their households,” Parada Lugo said.
As drug trafficking has become more sophisticated and diversified(opens in new tab), it requires broader and deeper coverage. FINND was launched in 2019 to promote journalism that looks for new approaches to the issue, with a focus on human-centered stories. More than 250 journalists from 12 Latin American countries have participated in the program.
¿Qué ideas sobre las drogas necesitamos desaprender?
La Fundación Gabo lanza ‘Todo lo que debes saber (y olvidar) de la narrativa sobre las drogas’, una guía que invita a cuestionar los estigmas y los discursos simplistas para abrirse a coberturas más amplias y profundas.… pic.twitter.com/OEj7W4dJm2
— Fundación Gabo (@FundacionGabo) July 21, 2026
“It has allowed them to detoxify the narrative that often surrounds coverage of drug-related issues and recognize the more human aspects surrounding them, and that not everything has to be viewed through the lens of punishment and criminalization,” Montes said.
FINND provides grants to fund journalistic projects in text, audio, video, multimedia and documentary formats. The funding is intended primarily to facilitate field reporting, Montes added.
Throughout the development of their projects, participants also receive mentoring, training and support from a network of 19 expert journalists from across the region.
This year, priority will be given to transnational projects covering issues across Colombia and Mexico, two countries where there is a particularly strong interest in drug coverage, Montes said. And for the first time, journalists will also be allowed to pitch projects for digital platforms.
Over the years, FINND has also produced various materials and resources for Latin American journalists interested in exploring underreported perspectives on drugs. The most recent is the guide “Everything You Need to Know (and Forget) About the Narrative Around Drugs”(opens in new tab), launched in July, which delves into the key concepts of what the Fund considers new narratives about drugs.
The free guide also includes a toolkit for building more rigorous, complex and stereotype-free stories about drugs, Montes said.
This article was translated with AI assistance and reviewed by Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera
