Independent Reporting from Cuba Wins Ibero-American Award for Environmental Journalism

Cuban Julio Batista Rodríguez (in Madrid in the image), winner of the award, contributes to several media outlets, among them ‘Periodismo de Barrio’. (Facebook)

14ymedio biggerEFE, via 14ymedio, Madrid, 1 February 2018 — The Cuban journalist Julio Batista Rodríguez was awarded the Special Ibero-American Prize for Environmental Journalism and Sustainable Development for his work The Dead Waters of the Havana Club.

The report, published in Periodismo de Barrio on 28 August 2017,  denounces the dumping of the byproduct vinasse from La Ronera Santa Cruz, the largest distillery in Cuba, which has killed off all the fish along the coast of the Chipriona inlet.

The Ibero-American Special Prize for Environmental Journalism and Sustainable Development is one of the categories of the King of Spain International Journalism Awards, organized by the EFE agency and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The jury, which granted the award unanimously, highlighted the difficulty of carrying out this kind of reporting in Cuba and also noted that Periodismo de Barrio is a non-profit organization whose primary aspiration is “to do journalism.”

The work of the Cuban journalist was selected among this year’s 44 aspirants for the sixth edition of the award.

Julio Batista (b. 1989), graduated in Journalism from the School of Communication of the University of Havana, has been a sports reporter in the weekly Trabajadores (Workers), as well as collaborating in several digital magazines such as Progreso Semanal, Cuba Contemporánea, On Cuba and Cubahora.

The prize is endowed with 6,000 euros (7,465 dollars at current exchange rate) and a bronze sculpture by the artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios, and is sponsored by the Aquae Foundation.

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