By Investigative reporter Ginna Morelo has spent years investigating the crimes that right-wing death squads committed during the decades-long conflict in Colombia.
Her work has been published in leading newspapers and she has written a number of books about her investigations. She is a five-time winner of Colombia’s highest journalism award, the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar, and has received international prizes, including from the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa and the Premio Ortega y Gasset.
But although her output has been prolific, and touched on some of the darkest sides to the Colombian conflict, for many years one of her projects remained in the dark: direct threats made against her family and fears for her sources meant it was a story just too dangerous to be told.
As she tells GIJN in an interview, nothing is ever wasted. And if you report carefully, and with your sources’ best interests at heart, there is nothing stopping you from going back to a story a number of years down the line.
University Under Siege
Starting in the 1960s, Colombia saw an explosion of violence between left-wing guerilla organizations, the armed forces, and later on, far-right armed groups. The latter in many cases acted in coordination with state security agencies.
The conflict was felt everywhere from the capital Bogotá to the Amazonian regions of the south, from the mountains to the coasts. Morelo is from Córdoba on the country’s northern Caribbean coast, where one of the key actors involved in the violence was the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) — an umbrella organization of right-wing paramilitaries.
For over a decade, Morelo investigated the violence meted out by the group against civilians in the region. Many of these reports were published but one topic — the story of a paramilitary group’s takeover of the University of Córdoba from the 1990s to the early 2000s — remained off-limits.
Marx Plaza at University of Córdoba. Image: Courtesy of Entre Ríos Museo, Diego Pérez
Members of the AUC later acknowledged as part of a demobilization process that they murdered professors, students, and labor unionists with a leftist ideology across the country. But back then, this ideological takeover — backed by force — was a secret, and many of Morelo’s sources were paralyzed with fear.
“When I told them what I wanted to do, they would share the stories of their beginnings in the student movements, but when I tried to delve deeper, they would ask for time, more time,” she says, about her sources’ reluctance to speak.
Morelo was warned the topic could put her in danger and several colleagues advised her not to investigate, while sources told her they were fearful and preferred to remain silent.
But through her reporting, Morelo discovered that the AUC’s actions — killings, threats, harassment, kidnapping, stigmatization, and more — against academics and staff at the university were part of a strategy that had a purpose beyond spreading terror or gaining power. Paramilitaries and politicians, she observed, had a counter-cultural project, so they conducted a systematic campaign to destroy any trace of what they considered “leftist” ideas.
Armed groups controlled the appointment of the university rector, banned library books, and exacted physical punishments, she found. The takeover resulted in dozens of people being killed or disappeared, pushed some intellectuals into exile, and forced the interruption of academic projects on topics such as food security and climate change. It also led to a local population plunged into fear and silence.
Part of that story, as a result of Morelo’s initial reporting, was due to appear as a chapter in her 2009 book “Tierra de Sangre, Memoria de las Víctimas” (Land of Blood, Memory of the Victims) — which was based on survivors’ accounts of the conflict in Córdoba. Just as she was about to go to press, however, Morelo received a phone call that shook her: a threat against her two children. She called the publisher and told them to hold fire.
“Those two nights I didn’t sleep at all, and I remember being almost like a watchman for my children” while they slept, she recalls. Ultimately, she decided to release the book but cut the chapter on the university takeover.
“I myself remained silent for protection,” Morelo tells GIJN, adding that part of her silence was out of “fear.”
A Story on Hold
Morelo’s story is similar to that of many journalists who have tried to expose the truth about events in Colombia, and other countries with high levels of violence and corruption, and who have encountered multiple threats to themselves and their families’ lives. During the past four decades, 2,546 reporters in Colombia have been threatened due to their work, according to the Colombian Press Freedom Foundation.
Morelo walked away from the university takeover story for nearly two years. When she went back to it, it was still considered too dangerous to report on, but she wanted to check in with her sources and find out what was happening.
It would take more than a decade for her to feel that the security situation was sufficiently changed for her to publish — and 13 years after her first book about the paramilitary influence in Córdoba, she released “La Voz de Los Lápices” (The Voice of the Pencils), in 2022.
To decide if it was finally safe, Morelo used a risk assessment method, with the help of a colleague, a social scientist, and her own sources — the survivors of the violence — who finally told her: “It’s time. We are ready.”
Morelo says that it’s important for reporters in a similar position to consider a golden rule: the importance of protecting the lives of reporters, sources, and those around them. As Morelo puts it: “We have no right… to put at risk the lives of the people who love us.”
There are two main concerns when deciding that a story can’t be told immediately. One is the possibility of losing impact. On that subject, Morelo says she has learned to appreciate other types of impact investigations can have — such as contributing to the healing process of victims and survivors, and helping societies learn from the past.
Another main concern is that witnesses may forget important details of the story, or that it may become harder or impossible to reach them. But, as Chilean investigative reporter Cristobal Peña said at an investigative journalism conference in Bogotá in 2011, the passing of time doesn’t necessarily mean a story will be lost or forgotten. It can actually “release consciences, secrets, and archives.” In other words, years after an event, people may have a more complete, reflective view of what happened.
That is what Morelo observed. After years of trying to tell the story, she found survivors who were finally willing to talk to her. Many had written down their memories, keeping a note of the events at the campus during the takeover, with records added in the intervening years.
“As journalists, we are not the owners of any story. Not even if we have the byline. Stories are created over time in people’s memories” says Morelo.
A plaque at the University of Córdoba to honor three students who were murdered in 1997. Image: Courtesy of Entre Ríos Museo, Diego Pérez
Lessons Learned
“Silence is a knot and a nest because everything seems tied [up], but things are happening there,” says Morelo. And even when there are security considerations stopping you from telling a story, you can consider these steps:
- Work on your mental health and find help. This should be the first step after any harassment or threat, and there are several organizations that support journalists in this field, such as the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and The Self-Investigation. “I was very, very affected by everything and I feel that this [the help from psychologists and psychiatrists] was decisive for me, deep inside,” Morelo explains. She also suggests seeking advice from experts in press freedom.
- Keep your distance. Depending on the level of risk, this might mean stepping away from the story indefinitely or moving to a new location, city, or country. “Sometimes it is necessary to distance yourself from a place. Not to lose the connection with it, but to find the voice of that place again,” she says.
- Read, organize, systematize. Take time to explore safe ways to report, or hit pause. This extra breathing time can also be a good moment to work on investigative actions that do not bring security risks, like researching, reading, classifying, systematizing, and analyzing documents.
- Listen. After the initial threat, Morelo did not go back to her investigation for some time. And, though the survivors of the violence still felt that it was not time to go public, it was a good moment to fuel the connection with them, keep in touch, and listen to their stories, even though the final outcome was uncertain.
“When a journalist is told that it’s not the right time and that they can’t publish yet, they say: ‘This is the end.’ But for me it wasn’t the end. For me it was like the best invitation I’ve ever received because from the moment I slowed down, I was able to look back at that memory of the past and see what was happening, the real background of the countercultural project [at the University of Córdoba],” Morelo explains. “So, it’s not the final product that makes me happy, but the process and the lessons learned.”
