Staff
Emily Corona (editor-in-chief)
Emily is a New York-based journalist and translator with bylines in NPR’s Latino USA, NACLA, PBS, Latino Rebels and the Mexican newspaper Reforma, where for three years she covered politics, education, social movements, environment and religion. Currently editor-in-chief of LAND and its flagship daily newsletter TILA, previously she worked as a fact-checker intern at the New York Times Licensing Group. A Dean Fellow and Tinker grant recipient at NYU, she’s currently undergoing a joint MA in Journalism and Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Summer Eldemire (deputy editor)
Summer is a Jamaican reporter currently studying a journalism master’s in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism concentration. She worked at the Jamaica Observer and her work has appeared in The Intercept. Her beat topics are organised crime, social commentary and cults.
Steven Cohen (editor)
Steven is a journalist, fact-checker, and researcher from Washington, DC, pursuing a master’s degree in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies. His reporting has appeared in BBC, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor, and The New Republic, where he worked as a fellow.
Jacquelyn Kovarik (editor)
Jacquelyn is currently a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellow at New York University, where she is studying Quechua and pursuing a masters degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism. Her research focuses on contemporary social change in Bolivia and Peru, with an emphasis on transitional justice and initiatives for well-being and resilience in Andean communities. In 2016 she filmed and produced a documentary about families fighting for reconciliation in a post-dictatorship Bolivian society.
Nelson Oliveira (editor)
Nelson is a Brazilian-American journalist based in New York City. He recently spent three years as a local news reporter for three different Hearst publications in Connecticut: The New Canaan News, the News-Times and the Stamford Advocate. Nelson has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Stony Brook University and he’s now pursuing a master’s degree in the Studio 20 digital journalism program at New York University, where he’s exploring new digital story formats and new ways to run and fund news organizations.
Vaclav Masek (staff writer)
Vaclav is currently pursuing a Masters in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at CLACS. Previously, he completed a triple-BA in Sociology, Spanish and Global Liberal Studies (Concentration in Politics, Rights, and Development) in May 2017. His undergraduate thesis was concerned with the transitional justice system in his home country of Guatemala.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega (staff writer)
Emiliano is a Mexican science journalist and graduate student at NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Before moving to New York, he spent a couple of years freelancing for publications such as Science, Nature, Scientific American or WWF. He was also an editorial intern at Radio Ambulante, NPR’s only Spanish-language podcast. Emiliano has focused on covering Latin American research and science policy, a beat that has been chronically underreported in the mainstream media.
Andrés Saravia (staff writer)
Andrés is a Mexican student pursuing a triple-BA in Journalism, Politics, and French. He held a fellowship with the office of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio during his reelection campaign, and has also been involved with groups ranging from Amnesty International to College Democrats NYU.
Laura S. Diaz (staff writer)
Laura is a Mexican undergraduate student at NYU double-majoring in Journalism and Media, Culture, and Communication. She’s thinking of pursuing a Masters in Food Studies, bringing her interests for media, research, sustainability and culture together over her love for food and politics. She speaks Spanish, English, French, and is currently learning Portuguese. She’s written for Washington Square News and Her Campus NYU, and did Model UN for 10 years.
Javier Porras (staff writer)
Javier is a Mexican student pursuing a double-BA in Latin American Studies and Economics. His current thesis explores the changing roles of women within the Zapatista movement from 1994 to the present.
Colleen Connolly (staff writer)
Colleen is a journalist pursuing a master’s degree in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies at NYU. She is also a Foreign Language Area Studies fellow studying Quechua. She previously worked as a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, where she managed the homepage and social media accounts and published stories about immigration, tourism at Machu Picchu and history. Her reporting has also appeared in Smithsonian magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review and NBC Chicago.
Alanna Elder (staff writer)
Alanna is pursuing a master’s in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean Studies and studying Quechua at NYU. She has experience in general assignment reporting for public radio in Alaska and Wyoming, and a B.S. in agroecology. Her research interests include land issues, farming, gender, and social movements in the Andes.
Founders
Roque Planas (Director, rplanas@latindispatch.com)
Roque’s works as editor of the Huffington Post’s Latino Voices vertical, where he covers Latino politics and Latin American affairs. Before joining HuffPost, he worked as a staff writer for the Fox News Latino and the New York Daily News. His work as a freelance journalist has appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine, the World Politics Review, and the New Internationalist. He holds an M.A. in history from Texas State University at San Marcos and earned an M.A. in the global joint master’s program in journalism and Latin American studies at New York University, where he was a Henry MacCracken Fellow.
Andrew O’Reilly (Former Editor-in-Chief, aoreilly@latindispatch.com)
Andrew’s work has appeared in ESPN The Magazine, Ralph Lauren Magazine, Hemispheres, The New York Times and The New York Daily News among others. He holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Pittsburgh and a joint M.A. in journalism and Latin American studies from New York University. His regional focus in reporting is Mexico and Central America. Andrew now works at Fox News Latino.
Mari Hayman (Former Editor-in-Chief, mhayman@latindispatch.com)
Mari is a native of Washington state and earned a B.A. in comparative literature at Stanford University. She holds a master’s degree in journalism and Latin American studies at New York University , where she focused on memory and human rights in Uruguay. Mari now works as as managing editor for Americas Quarterly.
Rachel Brooks-Ames Lachenmeier (Staff Writer)
Rachel was a Henry MacCracken Fellow at New York University , where she earned a master’s degree in Latin American Studies. She grew up in Austin, Texas, and earned her bachelor’s degree from Smith College in Latin American/Latino Studies. Her past work has focused on Mexico, U.S.-Mexico relations, and Mexican Americans and immigrants in Texas. Rachel is currently earning a doctorate at the Centro Latinoamericano-Suizo at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Contributors
Isabel is a free lance journalist and anthropologist from Colombia and a 2018 alumni of NYU’s journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies graduate program. Before that she was a researcher at Colombia’s National Center of Historic Memory, there she worked on projects on sexual violence as a war crime, the gender aspects of the Colombian armed conflict and the symbolic reparation of victims through the collection of their life histories. Her beat topics are memory and the legacies of armed conflict, sexual and gender violence and social justice.
Dusty is a writer based in New York City, and a producer of LAND’s podcast, Radio Dispatch. He has reported for The Nation magazine, NPR’s Latino USA and Eight by Eight magazine, among other places. He speaks English, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian with varying degrees of success, and is currently a Quechua-language FLAS Fellow at New York University.
Christopher is a Portuguese-language FLAS fellow at New York University. Previously, he worked as a researcher with a private security firm and as a writer for InSight Crime, a news organization focused on crime in Latin America.
Cleuci is a New York-based journalist from Brasília, Brazil. She speaks English, Portuguese and French.
Camila is a Colombian reporter currently pursuing a masters degree in Journalism and Latin American studies at New York University. Camila worked three years for the political news website La Silla Vacía in Bogotá. She moved to New York two years ago and has published her work in WNYC, africasacountry.com, and Feet in 2 Worlds. Camila also worked as a translator for Democracy Now! En Español during the summer of 2014 and as a reporter for the South African website Ground Up during the summer of 2013. She has a bachelors degree in Political Science from the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, and an M.A. in Sociology from The New School for Social Research in New York.
Nicole is a Henry MacCracken Fellow at New York University, where she is earning a masters degree in Global Journalism and Latin American Studies. She is from New York City but has lived and traveled throughout the Caribbean, where she studied, wrote and worked as an English and Spanish teacher. She is particularly interested in contemporary culture in Havana, Cuba. Nicole earned her bachelor’s degree in International Literary and Visual Studies at Tufts University.
Alexandra Hall
Alex is a Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellow at New York University. She is pursuing a masters degree in Journalism and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Alex served as a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic. She has a bachelors degree in Foreign Policy in the Americas from Vanderbilt University. She is also a photographer in New York City.
Luisa is a German-Argentine journalist from Berlin and Buenos Aires. She is currently completing a graduate degree in Cultural Reporting and Criticism at New York University’s Journalism Institute, and has worked as a reporter in London, Berlin, and now New York.
Patrick is a graduate student earning his master’s degree in Latin American Studies at New York University. Originally from Houston, Texas, he has lived and traveled extensively throughout Latin America learning, observing and absorbing the culture, politics and history of the region.
Katie is a journalist based New York City and a Henry MacCracken Fellow at New York University. After a long-term internship at Democracy Now, she worked as editor in chief of IndyKids, a nationally-distributed print and online newspaper written for and by children. She speaks Spanish and French and has studied and worked in Chile, Spain, France and Ireland.
Hanna is a writer and filmmaker focused on indigenous issues in Latin America. She received her masters in Global Journalism at NYU, where she began reporting on the Colombian peace process. Her video and written work has been featured in Fusion, The Huffington Post, Latino USA, and the North American Congress of Latin America. She is currently developing a film about indigenous resistance in Cauca, Colombia.
Francis is a 4th year undergrad at Brown University concentrating in International Relations and Latin American Studies. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Francis has written about Latin American political and economic issues for several student and professional publications. He is particularly interested in news from Puerto Rico and Brazil. He lived for six months in Rio de Janeiro, where he became fluent in Portuguese and worked as a reporter in the city’s favelas for RioOnWatch.org
Alison is a Missouri native and New York City freelance writer who has wanted to cover Latin America since studying Spanish in Central America. After moving to Brooklyn, her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Daily News, the Manhattan Times and Women’s eNews. She earned a master’s degree in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University. Her thesis focused on immigration policies after September 11, including counterterrorism measures, and their effects on the daily lives of immigrants in New York City.
Raisa Camargo studies at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where she is pursuing a double major in comparative international relations and minoring in French. Raisa grew up in New York City, Queens, with Colombian parents. As an intern reporter at Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, she is focusing on issues that affect the Hispanic community, with particular emphasis on immigration and the Western Hemisphere.
Reinhard Cate is a native of Alameda, California. He is a graduate of Santa Clara University with a B.S. in Political Science and New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism institute with an M.A. in Journalism. He is a photographer and filmmaker and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the New York Observer Magazine, Alpinist Magazine, Fox News, Frontline World and BBC World News. He recently finished a documentary film on the clash between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. An avid rock climber and adventurer, Reinhard has traveled much of the world but has focused his work primarily on the Middle East. You can see some of his photo and video work at www.reinhardcate.com. You can follow him on twitter at @reinhardcate.
Self-taught photographer JP Catepillán was born Puerto Natales, in the Magallanes region of Chile. He graduated with a degree in History, Geography and Civic Education from the Universidad Austral de Chile de Valdivia. He also studied regional and municipal public affairs at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado and political science at the Universidad de Chile. He is married and has two children. His photos can be viewed at www.jpcatepillan.cl and www.flickr.com/photos/chilefotojp.
Von Diaz is a native of Puerto Rico and spent most of her life in Atlanta, GA. Von is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, where she earned a B.A. in Women’s Studies and focused her research on women in Latin America and the developing world. She has worked in community advocacy and communications for a variety of nonprofit organizations focused on women and children. She now holds a dual M.A. in journalism and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University.
Juan is a journalist and photographer from Caracas, Venezuela. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and Latin American studies from Swarthmore College. Juan Víctor holds an M.A. from New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He has worked in Ecuador, France, Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, the Unites States and his native Venezuela. To see some of his photographic work, go to www.juanvictorfajardo.com
Jason Farbman is a Foreign Language/Area Studies Fellow at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, where he is comparing class consciousness amongst workers in factory occupations in Argentina and the United States during times of economic crisis. A former Green Party candidate for State Representative in Chicago, Jason has since been an organizer for LGBT rights and in the anti-war movement in Seattle, both in civilian movements and as a close supporter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Themes of struggle and community are featured in the music he writes and performs under the name Applekicker.
Nikolas Kozloff is a New York-based writer specializing in political and environmental topics. A former academic, he received his doctorate in Latin American history from Oxford University in 2002. Prior to writing his first book, he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, where he conducted research papers on Venezuela. He has provided political analysis on Latin America for such media outlets as BBC, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, C-SPAN Washington Journal, and even put in a guest appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Though he writes frequently on Latin America for such online publications as the Huffington Post, in more recent years he has focused increasingly on environmental topics.
Matt Landau is the founder of the Panama Report, an online travel and investment magazine. He has been featured in publications such as GQ, The New York Times and BusinessWeek for his take on life and investment in Central America.
Molly O’Toole has worked for a dozen publications, from Los Angeles Magazine and USA Today to current contributions at Newsweek International and The Associated Press. She most recently returned from three months in Mexico City, working for the AP and on her thesis about U.S.-Mexico relations. Molly earned her M.A. from New York University in the global joint master’s program for journalism and International Relations. She graduated cum laude from Cornell University and is a native of San Diego, California.
Marisa Raditsch is a California native who has lived in Mexico for four years while studying International Relations with a focus on Latin American Studies at the University of Guadalajara.
Paola is a native of San Diego, California. She graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College where she majored in history and psychology. As an undergraduate, Paola spent time in Latin America interning at El Financiero newspaper in Costa Rica and conducting thesis research in Argentina. Paola was a Henry MacCracken Fellow in New York University’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, where she earned her M.A.
Joel moved to Spain after graduating from Glasgow University with an M.A. in Hispanic Studies. After four years as a sports journalist in Madrid, he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is now based and works as a freelance journalist and T.V. producer.
James is an independent photojournalist based in Guatemala who specializes in documenting that country’s post-war social movement. Raised in Mexico City, James holds a B.A. in Cultural Geography from the University of California at Los Angeles. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Indypendent of New York and Yes! Magazine, and can be viewed at Mi Mundo.
Mike earned degrees in political science and journalism from the University of Pittsburgh. After graduating from college in 2006, Mike joined the Peace Corp and spent two and half years living and working in El Salvador. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political management at George Washington University.
Cesar Toscano
Cesar is a freelance journalist and photographer who grew up on both sides of the Tijuana, Mexico – San Diego, U.S. border. He earned a B.S. in management science and economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Since graduating in 2008, Cesar became the Co-Founder and CEO of Slique, a technical consulting and web application startup. His photos have appeared in several reports filed by The Latin America News Dispatch.
Maria Trimble
Maria is from Ontario, Canada, and holds an Honors B.A. in International Development from the University of Guelph. After graduating, she spent six months working with the Coady International Institute in Huancayo, Peru, where she was responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of an at home infant stimulation pilot program. Upon returning from Peru, Maria spent five months doing Andean health policy research for the Canadian Foundation of the Americas in Ottawa, Ontario. She holds an M.A. from New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, where her research focused on the politicized nature of Peru’s Vaso de Leche milk subsidy programming.