Howard R. Marsh Lecture

I am the Other. I am a Mexican, Latina, brown woman. I am a mother, and I like feminist ideals. Does that undermine my ability to report the truth? Can my experience of inhabiting a particular culturally-inscribed position make it easier to relate to social injustices? To my indigenous fellow Mexicans, I am a white, privileged woman. The international opportunity to cover the news has shifted my perspective, and displaced preconceived notions of what otherness means to me. Amid all of these changes, however, what has not changed is a professional priority to report the truth.


Bio
Ana Avila is an investigative journalist, most recently she was the deputy director of the Spanish edition of Newsweek based in Mexico City. Over the last 15 years, she has investigated corruption in political parties and campaigns, congressional lobbying leading to unfair practices in the private sector and the effects on the indigenous communities and environmental affectations due to mining in Mexico and Colombia. From 2010 to 2011, Avila worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists investigating the asbestos industry in Latin America. She was the co-winner of the John B. Oakes Award, from Columbia University School of Journalism and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for the story, “Dangers in the Dust.” Avila holds a B.A. in journalism from Iberoamericana University and an M.A. in social science from the Latin American Faculty of Social Science, both in Mexico City. She was a Fulbright Scholar in 2009-2010 and a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan 2019-2020. She is currently the Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan.