Cover of Donna DeCesare's Unsettled

UT Professor Wins Prestigious Journalism Award for Coverage of Central American Gangs

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Austin-based documentary photojournalist and writer Donna DeCesare has been awarded the 2013 Maria Moors Cabot Prize for her outstanding coverage of Latin America. The Cabot Prize is the oldest, most prestigious international prize in journalism for coverage of Latin America. The award is given each year by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

“The Cabot Prize has long held a special place in our mission because it recognizes courageous reporting about Latin America, often in countries where freedom of the press is far from a given and exercised at great personal risk,” said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger.

DeCesare is a photojournalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She has spent decades photographing and documenting gang violence, civil war and the impact of U.S. policy on Central America. For more on DeCesare see the Observer’s story on her work and latest book Unsettled/Desasosiego.

Other recipients of the 2013 award include The New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson, Brazilian investigative reporter Mauri Konig and Colombian news magazine editor-in-chief Alejandro Rubino Santos.