Research
and articles
This is a selection of articles and investigations I’ve conducted over
more than a decade in journalism.
An investigation into Ecuador’s flawed and unaffordable drug rehabilitation system. Winner of the New Narratives on Drugs Fund by the Gabo Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.
For decades, LGBTI individuals in Ecuador were subjected to forced disappearances, torture, and systematic violence—part of a brutal history that remains largely unaddressed. A quarter century after the decriminalization of homosexuality in the country, justice and reparations are still pending.
An investigation into obstetric and gynecological violence in Ecuador, and its disproportionate impact on Indigenous and low-income populations.
In the past two years, more than 340 cases of online sexual crimes against minors have been reported in Ecuador, with 93 percent still under preliminary investigation. An experiment made by a Vistazo Team highlights how vulnerable children and teenagers are to sexual predators operating on the internet.
An in-depth report examining the discussion around drug policy reform in Ecuador, as ongoing armed violence continues to take a deadly toll.
Narco culture has become fashion, merchandise, objects, music—such as narcocorridos—and narratives that permeate telenovelas, television series, and other forms of screen fiction consumed by millions worldwide. Yet, beyond its aesthetic and cultural appeal, it is, above all, an expression of raw, unfiltered capitalism, argues Omar Rincón, a Colombian journalist, academic, and essayist, is part of the research group behind this exhibition, first presented in Colombia and now in Ecuador.
Seated in a hammock woven from chambira fiber, his figure crossed by shafts of light filtering through the thatched palm roof of his hut, the aged face of Kemperi Baihua—Bameno’s last great Waorani jaguar shaman—radiates wisdom and a spirituality that can only be grasped when the forest is allowed to fill both mind and lungs. The rainforest is alive, and only its children truly understand the secrets it holds.
The acclaimed debut novel Fiebre de Carnaval by Esmeraldas-born writer Yuliana Ortiz Ruano moves between the tragic and the celebratory to tell the story of Ainhoa, a sharp-tongued and imaginative girl who shares her adventures with the guava, mango, and cherimoya trees peering through her window. That carefree childhood gradually fades as she grows older and is forced to confront overlapping cycles of violence and machismo.
Iche is a restaurant, laboratory, and culinary school dedicated to placing traditional Manabí cuisine on the global map. Its scholarship program for young people from low-income backgrounds is helping transform the reality of this coastal region, long affected by drug trafficking and crime.
China’s fishing fleet can easily be described as an armada. It comprises approximately 864,000 vessels and accounts for around 40% of global fish production, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. No continent surpasses it in fish output, and there is virtually no corner of the high seas it has not reached. This scale helps explain why, year after year for the past two decades, part of this fishing armada has traveled thousands of nautical miles to reach the edge of the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Galápagos Islands.
In a society shaped by machismo, where according to the latest report by the Latin American Development Association a woman is killed every 72 hours, where 65 out of 100 women have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime, and where women earn just $0.84 for every dollar earned by men, as reported by INEC, adversity remains widespread; yet women like Cecilia, Jéssica, Diana, Petita, Janeth, and Daimara offer a powerful lesson in leadership and resilience—each of them survivors of systematic violence who have become leading voices in the fight for gender equality and human rights, and through this report their stories are shared in the hope that their strength inspires many more and reminds every woman that she is not alone, because behind one, there are many.
“Daniela” is a stateless child, born on October 25, 2019, in a hospital in Guayaquil, welcomed with love by her two mothers who prepared everything for her arrival; however, when they attempted to register her, authorities stated she could only carry the surname of her biological mother due to the absence of an official artificial insemination certificate—one that was never issued because Daniela was conceived through a little-known method: home insemination; for E. and her wife J., who chose to remain anonymous, building a family meant confronting prejudice and discrimination in a society that often marginalizes LGBTI people, yet they remain steadfast in their belief that love and respect prevail, even as they fight for their daughter’s legal recognition; their case echoes the 2018 Satya ruling by the Constitutional Court, which allows children conceived through assisted reproduction to be registered under homoparental families, but requires a medical certificate—highlighting the legal gap at the heart of their struggle.