By It was to become known as “field of horror”: a forgotten paddock in greater Buenos Aires province with hundreds of horses, some sick, others malnourished, many already dead.
The year was 2019 and, for a time, the case became national news in Argentina, and even made international headlines. But as the weeks passed, the story slowly disappeared. There was, seemingly, no more to say about those dying horses.
Reporter Diego Fernández Romeral learned about the case at the time. Although it would be years until he was able to return to the story, there were a number of questions that troubled him: Who could benefit from something like this? What’s the point of having 700 horses corralled into a field? Where did the trail end?
When Fernández was finally ready to publish his investigation in 2024, he used a long-form chronicle format to narrate this story of animal cruelty in Argentina, and The Night of the Horses answered many of the questions that had been impossible to known five years earlier.
The story, which was published by the Latin American narrative magazine Gatopardo, went on to win the 2024 Gabo Prize in the text category. Judges praised Fernández’s compelling narrative, his reporting on the mafia network behind the tragedy, and how he linked the story of what happened in that hidden field with corruption and the trafficking of horse meat to countries like France.
“It is a memorable piece in every sense,” said the judges from the Gabo Prize, one of the most prestigious in Latin America. “The investigation itself, the focus, the quality of the prose… It’s especially revelatory in the way it details the horror behind the export of horse meat by organized crime groups from Argentina to Europe — a topic that was very little known about until now.”
GIJN interviewed Fernández to learn how he pulled together his investigation, how writing as a chronicle impacted his narrative style, and how his investigation revealed the gray areas in animal rights regulations that led to this tragedy.
Going Behind the Headlines
Nadia Nisnovich, one of the vets at the rescue center in the province of Buenos Aires. The photographs taken for this investigation won Anita Pouchard Serra a 2024 Gabo Prize in the photography category. Image: Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra, Gatopardo
When the news first broke about the abandoned horses, the story was widely featured on TV and radio, and filled print columns. The animals had been left in a field near the capital’s main airport, not too far from an exclusive country club, but hidden from view. Some were already dead, others were dying, many were starving, worm-ridden, sick. But while the images of the mistreated horses made compelling — if horrifying — viewing, the news stories were unable to delve into the complex story of corruption that lay behind it.
“At that moment the news closes a little on itself,” says Fernández, of the period in 2019 when the story was everywhere. “But when you let time pass, people move away. In this case, it stopped being in the media, it was completely forgotten,” he points out. “As time goes by, you can go back to the news and find a lot of things even more surprising than when the news comes out.”
Although the news cycle eventually moved on, the legal case continued, and the animal rescue organizations that were called that day continued their fight to rescue the horses.
Fernández has a habit of reviewing old news articles for stories that he’d like to return to or pick up again. This time, it was the case of the horses in Ezeiza. When he started reporting for this piece, years after the animals were found, he found a follow-up note by a small digital outlet that referred to the NGO responsible for rescuing the horses.
His investigation began with a call to the lawyer of the Equine Rescue and Rehabilitation Center to find out the status of the case. That conversation would be the start of a year-long investigation that would see him contacting activists, visiting some of the rescued horses in their newfound sanctuary, reviewing court documents, and putting together clues about a network dedicated to the illegal sale of horse meat that links fields in rural Buenos Aires to restaurants in Europe.
Assembling the Pieces
Understanding the stories of the horses that managed to survive the “field of horror” was key to the investigation. For this, Fernández built a relationship with Florencia Sampietro, the director of the equine rescue center, who took him to the zone where the horses were now located. The NGO was granted the right to care for the animals by the courts, but the horses’ location had to be kept secret in order to protect them.
In the field, Sampietro detailed the stories of the animals that they had managed to rescue — including a number who needed to undergo amputations in order to survive. Some of the award-winning photography by Anita Pouchard Serra that accompanied the article show the animals wearing prosthetic limbs. (She also won a 2024 Gabo Prize for this project, in the photography category, with the jury praising the “emotional depth” and “attention to detail” she captured in the images.)
Among the horses was a mare, Esperanza. When she was found, her leg was rotten, the result of getting caught in a wire fence. The leg was later amputated in an operation that lasted four hours. She has been an amputee for nine years, and is now a “guide” to Lilu, another rescue pony whose eyes were gouged out by her owners (possibly because the pony had been too scared when pulling a cart).
Another of the rescued ponies is Nevada — who was found malnourished, anemic, and infected with parasites. The recovery process for this animal took years, particularly after a fracture became infected and never healed.
Documenting the Evidence
Fernández’s next step was to gain access to documentation from the court case, which would help him begin to connect pieces, from those who stole horses to raise them in clandestine fields, to those who were involved in harvesting them at abattoirs, and finally selling their meat to European countries.
“A second line of investigation opened up, which was how the organized crime gangs dedicated to this in Argentina worked,” he explains. This line of inquiry opened up his reporting to lawyers, prosecutors, and judicial cases that had an impact linked to one particular family – a father and his two sons — who were central to the story.
He tried for several months to speak to the family accused of abandoning and mistreating the animals, as well as with officials suspected of either turning a blind eye to this trade or of being somehow complicit in it, but faced a wall of silence.
“That took me a long time and in the end they didn’t give me interviews, but not being given an interview is also something that has to be told,” he said.
“Forget it,” Sampietro told him at one point. “In what country do you see the mafia giving interviews?”
What Fernández did manage to obtain was information about the farms involved in suspicious animal trades. By calling the slaughterhouses, he found out what type of horses they sold and their cost. He also went undercover as a stockpiler — an intermediary who buys horses and then sends them to the slaughterhouse — which allowed him to detail the purchase value and establish how much animals were being sold for.
His third line of inquiry was to trace the chain of horse meat from Argentina — where it is illegal to farm horses for human consumption, but it is legal to export meat — to Europe. Fernández started to ask questions about how the meat gets to Europe, where it’s sold, who the key meat distribution companies were, questions that led him to contact the NGOs Animal Welfare Foundation in Germany and Tierschutzbund Zürich in Switzerland.
One finding that helped him were the complaints made by European NGOs in the European Parliament. Their concerns had led to a recommendation to suspend the import of horse meat from Argentina because of concerns about provenance.
With the horse meat export map that Fernández revealed in his text, the next step was to demonstrate the corruption behind this route. Taking the meat to the European market was only possible with sign off from the authorities; in this way, he discovered the sale of permits and the existence of bribes to inspectors who validate the export of meat. An investigation carried out by the agronomy faculty at the University of Buenos Aires showed that of the 250,000 horses that arrive at the slaughterhouses each year, only 8% have their origin and medical history.
The investigation revealed where the meat is sold —in which restaurants, in which supermarkets, and which companies distribute it. In Argentina, he managed to contact a high-ranking former police commissioner from Buenos Aires province, whose role had covered the prevention of the theft of animals in rural areas, who gave him off-the-record information about how crimes like this were taking place even with the knowledge of those who should prevent it.
He told the reporter that sometime after the initial discovery, another field was found with horses that had been dead for months. But the authorities did nothing.
As for the perpetrators at Ezeiza? The animal rights groups faced a dilemma about what kinds of charge to pursue against the accused: if they were to face a lesser animal abuse charge, they would face less time in prison, but it would be easier to rescue the horses still languishing in a field. A more serious charge — such as for usurpation of land and animal rustling — would have taken far longer.
During the trial, the father and his sons accused of mistreating the animals defended themselves, claiming that what was done with the animals had been “for their good and not for their harm.” They admitted some of the horses were “a bit skinny,” but claimed that the rest had been in “perfect condition.”
The family was only given a suspended sentence of eight months, but the equine rescue center appealed, taking the case to a different court. That court ultimately disqualified the family from farming animals.
Fernández makes these suggestions for reporters investigating similar scandals:
- Carry out research work from the peripheries. Never try to get to the heart of a mafia operation directly. You have to go from the outside in.
- If there is a judicial process, talk to the lawyers, who are the people most interested in making the crimes known.
- Gather all the information possible — this will give you a tool when facing interviews those who will seek to deny the facts.
The Chronicle as an Investigative Genre
The pony Lilu recuperates at the rehabilitation center. Image: Courtesy of Anita Pouchard Serra / Gatopardo
Once the reporting was done, Fernández had to consider the best way to tell the story. As he saw it, he needed to narrate a tale that linked horses stolen by minors from the poorest neighborhoods in Argentina to the dishes being served up at gourmet restaurants in Europe.
“It crossed social classes, countries, continents,” he explains. “And everything started after finding a field full of dead horses that had no explanation at the beginning.”
As for how to achieve a good chronicle narrative? Fernández recommends letting yourself be moved by the stories. “If you do not experience those emotions, the pain, and suffering of others, if you do not have a sincere and genuine bond with the people you interview, if you are not moved by what they tell you, it is very difficult,” he says.
In the article, Fernández connected two stories, on the one hand, that of the rescued horses, on the other, the personal story of one the main activists, Florencia Sampietro, who told him how being involved in the rescue of the horses had given her hope and helped her overcome a childhood experience of sexual abuse. Sampietro told him she had identified with the horses — creatures also were forced into silence in the face of aggression — and that helping them gave her strength. Through her story, the piece became not just a chronicle of animal abuse, but also of abuse against women, which gave a new meaning and more depth to the investigation.
Fernández, who is from the south of Buenos Aires, reported this piece as a freelance journalist. He concedes that as a freelance reporter, it can be hard to work on investigative stories, which require greater effort and time commitments, but on the other hand, he says letting the investigation “rest” from time to time meant that new angles appeared.
“When you find a story that has a depth — like what I saw in this story — you need that time,” he says. “I was able to do it with all the energy that was needed [but also] while letting things rest for moments and allowing new angles to appear.”
