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In addition to NACLA’s news articles, photojournalists contribute original photography to our coverage, offering glimpses of the people and places behind the stories. This year, that has included a look into Mexico’s oldest union, the 10-year anniversary of the Ayotzinapa massacre, fires in Colombia and Bolivia, long-term residential care for the elderly in Peru, community art in Panama, and green energy in southern Chile.
Here are our top photos of the year. Support our work to help us bring you more quality analysis and reporting in the new year.
Peru | February 2024
Magdalena Zegarra Chiappori
Zegarra Chiappori documents how long-term care facilities in Peru are failing older adults dependent on their services. This photo is of a makeshift wheelchair in the bathroom of the Canevaro Shelter in Lima.
Bolivia | February 2024
Benjamin Swift
Swift and Barriga Dávalos argue that the public demonstrations in response to wildfires in Bolivia obscured the agro-industrial sector’s role in exacerbating the blazes. This photo is of the forests surrounding Asunción de Quiquibey, which burned from September to November 2023. With only 10 park rangers for the whole reserve, Indigenous communities had to control fires without equipment or professional support.
Colombia | February 2024
Antonio Cascio
On January 22, multiple wildfires erupted on the outskirts of Bogotá. “These events,” Natalia Torres Garzón writes, “far from isolated, are part of an alarming situation in Colombia and Latin America due to "El Niño"—a climate phenomenon caused by warming waters in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean—and whose effects are intensified by climate change.” In this photo, a woman cries after losing the home where she and her three children lived, due to a fire in Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá’s outskirts. Seven houses burned down in the area during one of the hottest days recorded in January 2024 in Colombia.
Mexico | February 2024
David Bacon
David Bacon interviews Humberto Montes de Oca, a longtime Mexican union leader, to contextualize the difficult relations between the Mexican Union of Electrical Workers and former progressive President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The photo is from a 2011 protest, when members of the union and their families camped out for months in Mexico City's main square over the firing of 44,000 electrical workers and other changes.
Panama | March 2024
Grant Burrier and Sarah Saeed
Amid government efforts to modernize Panama City, the city’s diablos rojos, or “red devil” buses, face the risk of being phased out and fully decommissioned. In this chronicle and photo essay, Grant Burrier and Sarah Saeed write about the history of the buses, and the local residents who continue to defend them.
United States | May 2024
Mariana Navarrete Villegas
Navarrete Villegas writes about the experience of Latinx students at Columbia University during the university occupations for Palestine that swept the U.S. and the world. This photo captures the encampment on April 19, following mass arrests on the previous day but before the encampment was shut down on April 30.
Mexico | August 2024
Regina López
Photographed are two community members of Xayakalan embracing each other. Xayakalan is the name given to territory that was recuperated by Indigenous people of Santa María Ostula from landowners and gangs in 2009. In the article, López and Santiago Navarro describe the ongoing struggle for Nahua to maintain their land in the face of legal and criminal violence.
Chile | September 2024
Peter Klepeis
Green hydrogen in southern Chile elicits glowing rhetoric from energy advocates. But unless benefits are shared with locals, Peter Klepeis, Keith Klepeis, Gabriela Mora-Klepeis, and Jorge López Maldonado argue, the projects could replicate harmful inequalities. In this image, a herder is pictured herding sheep near Gente Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, January 2024.
Mexico | October 2024
Anita Pouchard Serra
September 26, 2024 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Ayotzinapa massacre, a mass disappearance of Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College students who were en route to a demonstration in Mexico City. Ten years later, as the Mexican government continues to discredit investigations and lay off forensic experts, protests for justice and truth continue. In this photo, protesters march through the streets of Mexico City on this years’ anniversary of the mass disappearance, holding posters that read “We will keep searching for you 43.”
Mexico | October 2024
Encarni Pindado
Madeline Wattenbarger writes about the murder of Father Marcelo Pérez Pérez, a priest from the Chiapas region who spoke openly against the structural causes of violence in his home region. In the photo, family members lower Father Marcelo Pérez's coffin, adorned with an image of Jesus Christ, surrounded by over 3,000 people who came to say goodbye to the priest on October 22, 2024.
