What she thought would be a temporary endeavor turned into something much more permanent for Cuban journalist Nora Gámez Torres. For a little over a decade, she has reported for the Miami Herald, and its Spanish-language sister publication El Nuevo Herald, on the "historic" relations between Cuba and the United States. It’s work that recently earned her the Gold Medal of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University.
“It’s a tremendous surprise and a great honor,” Gámez Torres told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “Being on that list of journalists who have reported on Latin America and following a tradition of Cuban and then Cuban-American journalists receiving the award was a great surprise to me.”
This list, Gámez said, includes editors and founders of Cuban newspapers from the Republican era (before the Cuban Revolution) whom the journalist had admired, such as José Ignacio Rivera, the director of the Diario de la Marina who received the award in 1941.
Gámez said Cuba doesn't usually attract much media attention beyond its impact on U.S. foreign policy. So this award has special significance because it gives particular importance not only to her work, but also to the Herald for covering a region that impacts the lives of thousands of residents of South Florida.
This was also the opinion of the Cabot Prize jury, which described her journalism as "fair, accurate, and groundbreaking" and said that she has become “the most authoritative voice on the island nation in the U.S. media.”
“With Cuban media under tight government control, many Cubans also learn about events in their own country through her reporting,” the jury added.
After studying journalism at the University of Havana, Gámez, like many young professionals on the island, said she became disillusioned with the limited opportunities she had to "do real journalism" in a place where the State controls the media.
“It was basically working for the official media, under many restrictions and practically forced to produce propaganda,” Gámez said.
That's why she thought academia would be the place to help educate new generations. After years as a professor, she obtained scholarships to continue her training. First, to pursue a master's degree in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, and later a doctorate in sociology at City, University of London.
After completing her doctorate, she went to the U.S. looking for an opportunity in academia there. Although she hadn't been thinking about journalism, a job opportunity arose from El Nuevo Herald. This was practically her first professional experience in journalism and she saw it as being temporary.
“Doing journalism today is truly a very challenging task,” said Gámez, who highlights, for example, the economic pressures faced by local media outlets (like the Herald), which inevitably affect journalists. As a bilingual journalist, she usually publishes in English and Spanish.
Despite the many demands of academia, the pace of journalism was one of the main challenges that surprised her.
“On the other hand, it's truly been an incredible few years because you have the opportunity to witness the history that's being made right now and to be the one who can try to understand and narrate what's happening, those historic things that are happening and that I was lucky enough to witness,” she said.
A few months after arriving at the Herald, the U.S. and Cuba announced the reestablishment of relations.
"And a dizzying pace of events began that no one could have foreseen," she said.
Among them was the visit of a U.S. president to Cuba after many decades. Gámez was able to be part of the team of journalists that accompanied former President Barack Obama to Cuba, and that was the last time she was able to visit the island.
These weren't the only events. She covered the death of Fidel Castro, the arrival of the first president for Cuba who is not part of the Castro family, and of course the "historic protests" of July 11, 2021.
“And I’ve been there to tell all those stories,” she said.
Gaméz said her experience in academia has been "vital" in covering these historic events. During her years at the university, she dedicated herself to researching Cuba, gaining a deep understanding of its reality while creating a network of academics, experts and even artists who have been very important to her coverage of the island from Miami. It also provided her with tools such as the use of statistics and data management, she said.
“Above all, it gave me a set of skills and a slightly deeper analytical capacity, which is what I've tried to bring to my coverage of Cuba to try to understand how the country has changed over the years,” she said. “And of course, a familiarity with social and political theories that allow you to better analyze Cuba and U.S. foreign policy, which is one of the main topics I cover.”
Her investigations and scoops have drawn criticism from the Cuban government. Examples include her exclusives on Havana Syndrome and the arrest of a former U.S. ambassador to Miami who pleaded guilty to being a foreign agent in Cuba. One of the most recent was based on leaks of secret financial documents from the Cuban Armed Forces, which allegedly revealed millions in assets while the country's government claimed there was no money for medical care or improving the electrical infrastructure.
"I've been accused of everything, of working for the State Department, of working for the CIA," she said.
Gámez has been part of award-winning investigative teams such as the Panama Papers, as well as the Odebrecht and Bribery Division series. Her work has also been recognized by the Florida Society of News Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and other organizations.
Although Cuba is her specialty, she has also covered topics such as Venezuela, Haiti and the Caribbean in general; countries with large populations in Miami. Gámez Torres is proud to continue the Herald's tradition of covering countries beyond its borders. In fact, she is one of 17 journalists from the Herald to win the Gold Medal.
"That's incredibly important to us—being able to do so with the utmost seriousness and rigor possible. We're one of the few media outlets in the United States that has daily coverage of these countries," said Gámez, who laments that due to the local media crisis, they're unable to cover many more countries.
“Journalism is facing tremendous challenges. Above all, the local press is severely diminished. At the same time, there is a massive proliferation of misinformation on social media, there is a shift in audiences, and we are competing with a new figure: the influencer, who lacks the journalist's commitment to reporting the facts,” she said. “In this context, our work becomes even more important in the sense that someone has to do the traditional, boring work (laughs) of seeking out all the information and comparing sources and trying to report the best information possible so that those who are dictating policy can then make decisions.”
Gámez Torres will receive the Maria Moors Cabot Prize at a ceremony on Oct. 8 at Columbia University in New York. Omaya Sosa Pascual, co-founder of the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI) in Puerto Rico; Natalia Viana, co-founder of Agência Pública in Brazil; and Mexican journalist Isabella Cota of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) complete the list of 2025 Gold Medal winners. This is the second time in the prize's history that all four recipients are women.
