How Is Latin American Journalism Resisting Authoritarianism?

April 24, 2025
12:00–13:15PM EDT
Riot police attack journalists who accompanied Carlos F. Chamorro, director of Confidencial, to the Plaza El Sol offices to inquire about the confiscation of their offices in Managua, Nicaragua. December 15, 2018. Photograph by Carlos Herrera.

In the face of authoritarianism – marked by often violent attacks on democratic processes, press freedom, and journalists (along with other forms of abuse) – we will explore how Latin American journalists and photographers are resisting.

In particular, we will discuss how CONNECTAS, a hemispheric platform and regional reference for investigative journalism, works by promoting in-depth, collaborative reports that help to expose abuses of power by disseminating evidence-based analyses.

This event features a discussion with Carlos Huertas, director of CONNECTAS, who will present some of the most impactful and in-depth reports produced by the platform, and Carlos Herrera, a photographer from Nicaragua who has directly confronted the very challenges we will be discussing. Carlos Herrera will showcase his photographic work and offer a personal perspective on how investigative photojournalism can navigate and address abuses of power.

The event will be moderated by Leonardo Carrato.

Participants

Carlos Eduard Huertas is Director of CONNECTAS, the pioneering and leading Latin American investigative journalism and collaboration platform, that Carlos founded CONNECTAS in 2012 when he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Carlos Herrera is co-founder of Divergentes, an independent Nicaraguan media organization. Before Divergentes, Carlos Herrera worked at Nicaragua’s leading media outlets, such as La Prensa and Confidencial. Carlos has also been a photographer and correspondent for various international media organizations.
Leonardo Carrato is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and works as a photographer and filmmaker. He completed the Mentor Program at VII and hosts a series of conversations on, and writes about, Brazilian photography for The VII Foundation. Leo is also an educator in the Visual Journalism Program for Latin American photographers, and in 2024, he joined The VII Foundation as a contributing photographer.