Ricardo Uceda | |
---|---|
Born |
Chiclayo, Peru | July 27, 1954
Nationality | Peruvian |
Occupation | journalist |
Known for | reporting on government corruption, La Cantuta Massacre |
Awards |
International Press Freedom Award (1993) International Press Institute (2000) Maria Moors Cabot prize (2000) |
Ricardo Uceda Pérez (born July 27, 1954) [1] is a Peruvian journalist notable for his award-winning coverage of military and government corruption.
Uceda was born in Chiclayo, Peru in 1954. [1] He studied journalism at the Jaime Bausate y Mesa Institute of Journalism in Lima and economics and journalism at the National University of San Marcos. [1] [2] He worked for the magazine El Mundo in 1974, then served short stints with the daily newspapers Expreso, El Diario, and El Nacional. [1] In 1987 he worked as an investigative reporter at the television station Canal 2 before becoming deputy director of the magazine Sí the following year. [1]
During his tenure at Sí, Uceda published reports on the corruption of government officials, exposing army massacres and collaboration with drug lords. [2] He consistently refused to reveal the sources of his investigations, leading to numerous government cases against him. [2] He was also accused by government spokespeople of being connected with the Shining Path, though these charges were never substantiated. [2] In 1992, Sí ran a story implicating senior military officials in the Barrios Altos massacre, an incident in which the anti-communist death squad Grupo Colina killed fifteen partygoers, including an eight-year-old child, after mistaking them for Shining Path members. [3] Following the story, Uceda was the subject of a police investigation for "falsifying information", a charge of which he was later cleared. [2] An Americas Watch (an arm of Human Rights Watch) spokesperson condemned the investigation as being part of a general pattern of repression against journalists by the government of Alberto Fujimori. [4]
In one high-profile case in 1993, members of a dissatisfied army faction directed Uceda to a mass grave containing the corpses of nine students and one professor kidnapped from La Cantuta University. [5] Ten army officers and soldiers were eventually charged with the crime, which became known as the La Cantuta Massacre. [5] When angry officials accused Uceda of obstructing justice in response to his reporting—a crime punishable by a prison term—the Peruvian Congress held a vote to guarantee his safety. [1] Complicity in this massacre became one of the charges for which then-president Alberto Fujimori was subsequently tried and found guilty by a panel of three Peruvian judges. [6]
In 1994, Ricardo Uceda resigned as editor-in-chief of Sí to form a special investigative team at El Comercio, then Peru's most popular daily newspaper. [1] As with Uceda's Sí reporting, the Comercio team focused on cases of governmental corruption. [2] One of the team's most notable successes came in 1998, when they exposed the misuse of state funds intended for the survivors of El Niño-created floods and mudslides; the story resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of Civil Defence Chief General Homero Nureña. [1]
In 2004, he published the book Muerte en el Pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejército Peruano, which explored individual cases in the long conflict between the Shining Path and the Peruvian Army. [2]
Uceda was awarded a 1993 International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists in recognition of his reporting on both the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres. [7]
In 2000, the International Press Institute selected him as one of 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past half-century. [8] His book Muerte en el Pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejército Peruano was shortlisted for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005, losing to Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by UK author Alexandra Fuller. [9] In the same year, he won the Maria Moors Cabot prize of Columbia University, the oldest international award in the field of journalism. [10]