International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

María Cristina Caballero, Colombia, is the former editor of investigations at the weekly newsmagazine Semana.

María Cristina Caballero, Colombia

She is currently studying at Harvard while she is freelancing for The Boston Globe, El Tiempo, and CNN Interactive among others. She is writing a book on the Colombian conflict. Her reports have probed deep into the Colombian drug cartels, including an exclusive interview with a Cali cartel leader, and into the infiltration of drug money at the highest ranks of government. She received a 1999 grant from the U.S.-based Fund for Investigative Journalism to write about Colombia’s struggle toward peace after decades of war between the government and FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. Caballero was awarded a Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award in 1999, and in 1998 she was the recipient of her second Simón Bolívar National Prize for Journalism for her exclusive interview with Carlos Castaño, Colombia’s paramilitary leader. Caballero’s work has earned her several other reporting awards, including the Inter American Press Association Human Rights Journalism Award. She is the former director of investigations at Cambio 16, another newsmagazine, and was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard in 1997.