Ricardo Uceda Pérez (born July 27, 1954)^[1] is a Peruvian journalist notable for his award-winning coverage of military and government corruption.

Background

Uceda was born in Chiclayo, Peru in 1954.^[1] He studied journalism at the Jaime Bausate y Mesa Institute of Journalism in Lima and economics and journalism at the National University of San Marcos.^[1][2] He worked for the magazine El Mundo in 1974, then served short stints with the daily newspapers Expreso, El Diario, and El Nacional.^[1] In 1987 he worked as an investigative reporter at the television station Canal 2 before becoming deputy director of the magazine Sí the following year.^[1]

Anti-corruption journalism

During his tenure at Sí, Uceda published reports on the corruption of government officials, exposing army massacres and collaboration with drug lords.^[2] He consistently refused to reveal the sources of his investigations, leading to numerous government cases against him.^[2] He was also accused by government spokespeople of being connected with the Shining Path, though these charges were never substantiated.^[2] In 1992, Sí ran a story implicating senior military officials in the Barrios Altos massacre, an incident in which the anti-communist death squad Grupo Colina killed fifteen partygoers, including an eight-year-old child, after mistaking them for Shining Path members.^[3] Following the story, Uceda was the subject of a police investigation for "falsifying information", a charge of which he was later cleared.^[2] An Americas Watch (an arm of Human Rights Watch) spokesperson condemned the investigation as being part of a general pattern of repression against journalists by the government of Alberto Fujimori.^[4]

In one high-profile case in 1993, members of a dissatisfied army faction directed Uceda to a mass grave containing the corpses of nine students and one professor kidnapped from La Cantuta University.^[5] Ten army officers and soldiers were eventually charged with the crime, which became known as the La Cantuta Massacre.^[5] When angry officials accused Uceda of obstructing justice in response to his reporting—a crime punishable by a prison term—the Peruvian Congress held a vote to guarantee his safety.^[1] Complicity in this massacre became one of the charges for which then-president Alberto Fujimori was subsequently tried and found guilty by a panel of three Peruvian judges.^[6]

In 1994, Ricardo Uceda resigned as editor-in-chief of Sí to form a special investigative team at El Comercio, then Peru's most popular daily newspaper.^[1] As with Uceda's Sí reporting, the Comercio team focused on cases of governmental corruption.^[2] One of the team's most notable successes came in 1998, when they exposed the misuse of state funds intended for the survivors of El Niño-created floods and mudslides; the story resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of Civil Defense Chief General Homero Nureña.^[1]

In 2004, he published the book Muerte en el Pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejército Peruano, which explored individual cases in the long conflict between the Shining Path and the Peruvian Army.^[2]

Awards and recognition

Uceda was awarded a 1993 International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists in recognition of his reporting on both the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres.^[7]

In 2000, the International Press Institute selected him as one of 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past half-century.^[8] His book Muerte en el Pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejército Peruano was shortlisted for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005, losing to Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by UK author Alexandra Fuller.^[9] In the same year, he won the Maria Moors Cabot prize of Columbia University, the oldest international award in the field of journalism.^[10]

References