Maria Antonieta Gomez Alvarez is a 38-year-old woman who lives in Chiapas, at the bottom of Mexico. She has spent her life quietly struggling, as a mother and a midwife, a soldier and an advocate. Today she is a journalist.
Tonita, as she is called, is a squatter in the outskirts of town. Hers is a world of pirated electricity, rebel armies, inequality and poverty. She is a single mother. She is small, with rosy cheeks, and she is very quiet. When I first met her, I worried that she was too shy to be a reporter.
But when this woman speaks, it is impossible not to listen. “There are so many things that the world should know,” she says. “As long as no one knows, nothing will change.”
Tonita is a member of The Press Institute for Women in the Developing World’s inaugural class of journalism trainees. The Institute is an international nonprofit organization and independent journalism initiative that trains women in developing countries to be journalists. They are taught to write about issues like HIV/AIDS, violence against women, reproductive rights, political oppression, poverty and community development. Their work is published on the Institute’s own multilingual newswire, through which media organizations worldwide can access their important stories.
This week, thousands of miles from Chiapas, the Institute began training journalists at its second location, in Kathmandu, Nepal. A year ago, I founded the Institute in an effort to reinvigorate the craft of strong, thorough, independent global journalism. But it wasn’t until I met the five women we trained this year that I understood the power of the Institute.
We began last September. At an old wooden table in a library filled with Mayan artifacts, I sat with five women. They had come to the Institute from diverse backgrounds.
More than one of them, including Tonita, is indigenous, and thus carries unimaginable social, cultural and political burdens. One had lived her whole life as a domestic worker, but decided, upon hearing about the opportunity offered by the Institute, to tear free of the cultural oppression that had, until then, forced her to work as a housekeeper. Another woman, who is a bit younger, is part of a generation for which rebellion and tumult are commonplace.
The fifth trainee is the most outspoken. She is an activist and a radio personality in San Cristobal. She is here to learn the craft of writing and the discipline of balanced reporting. She wants to write about political oppression and abortion. And like her, the others say they have a burning desire to tell true stories. They will document poverty and sickness here, at the bottom of Mexico, in Chiapas.
The first day of training, back in September of 2006, was the toughest. We began with a lesson on ethics, the art of training oneself to be fair, to study the many sides of a story, to consider stakeholders and to report with courage and integrity. I worried we would face resistance as we asked people to sever their ties to activist groups and explained why the voice of the government deserved space in the stories they would write.
Our program director, Bridget Huber, described terms like objectividad, credibilidad, independencia and eticas, and the five women nodded. Their expressions revealed that they had known the meaning of these words all their lives and were eager to put them into practice. In a place like southern Mexico, where the media is government-owned, radicalized or proudly one-sided, I was amazed to see that a group of women knew so immediately that there was a better way to disseminate information.
The women studied dilligently to learn reporting skills and writing techniques, to avoid libel and to understand that every story contains not just one, but many truths.
The Chiapas program was our first try, a grassroots effort to tell local stories and to fill topical and geographical holes in mainstream media, and, truth be told, we didn’t know if it would work. Could five women with no journalism experience really report and write hard-hitting stories? Would they be able to put aside their political biases and strive to produce balanced reporting?
Nothing has inspired me more than watching those five women rise to the challenge. In the six months since they completed their training, they have uncovered stories about cervical cancer, rape, the plight of organic farmers, a lack of health care services and more. They have been courageous and they have been fair.
We opened our second site this week in Kathmandu, Nepal, and already plans are in the works to expand into Rwanda. As I think back on the first week of training in Mexico, a single image strikes me. I see our trainees — all very nervous — on the morning they went into the field for the first time.
As I sat at the far end of that long table in the damp library, I watched the women carefully make sure they knew how to work their new gadgets — tape recorders, digital cameras and the like. We gave them pens and stiff, new reporter notebooks. Tonita wore red high heels and jewelry. Her cheeks were flushed red, too. I watched her take a deep breath and look to the sky before she headed off. I was wondering if she could do it. I think she was, too.
A few hours later, she returned to the office. She was the first one back. And somehow, she seemed to be a different person.
She was talking a mile a minute, filling us in on every detail of her interviews. Later that day, we all gathered for lunch. Tonita ate quickly. As others smoked, chatted and discussed the problems they had faced in the field, Tonita excused herself and went to the workroom. This was the second time she had ever used a computer. And she wanted to practice. I could see then that nothing would slow her down.
Looking at her it is easy to think, as I did at first, that she is shy, so accustomed to hardship that she has lost her voice. But there is a fire inside this woman. She is a natural journalist. She repeatedly uncovers important stories, conducts brilliant interviews and brings original angles to her stories.
My passion for the Institute started out as a passion for journalism. I wanted to train regular people to be strong, ethical reporters — people in the thick of their communities, with the greatest access and the greatest insight. I wanted to give the world a new form of independent journalism that is raw, honest, viable and important to local and international communities.
I still want all of those things.
But the core of my passion has shifted. Today, I work for as much for the amazing women who live in poverty with dignity and strive to keep themselves and their communities informed. They are women who believe that life can be different and declare that journalism might be the way to create change.
They are women like Tonita, who, when given an opportunity, take it, as much for themselves as for the dream and the hope that change is possible.
