Alma Guillermoprieto, one of the few practicing reporters today who deserves to be elevated to "journalist," returned to the New Yorker for the first time in a long time a couple of weeks ago. (According to the online archives, she hasn't published a full story there for five years.) In familiarly excellent fashion, she starts her chronicle of the Mexican drug trade at an art show and ends on a side street in Mexico City, near a subway stop, at a ceremony for the cult of death worshiped by drug dealers, and the whole piece encapsulates the crisis better than any other I've read.
What makes Guillermoprieto's reporting so absorbing and lasting is she tells stories of international importance from the perspective of the lower and middle classes, or, as a famous countryman famously coined, "Los de abajo" -- you know, those "regular people" so many reporters search for and claim to represent but never really find. When her articles address official events, background and/or sources, they're addressed in prose so fluid it's as if she were explaining it to you around a kitchen table. In an era where reporters, me included, want to run after any "official" or "celebrity" they can, tape recorder and video camera in hand, she is a refreshing antidote and a reminder that journalism is about living as we all live, being comfortable around people we should be comfortable around, and giving a voice to the voiceless. Plain and never simple. Equally important, she seems to have networks of friends in every major Latin American city, or, at least makes them very easily.
Her two collections of reportage for the New Yorker are always worth a read, first time or 11th. Even their cover photographs (obviously, not taken by her) are two of the most potent I've seen.
Update: Writing this reminds me that senior year of college, I nominated her for an honorary degree. Some guy named Franzen won out. I know a friend's dad loved the speech.
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