The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) has awarded EL PAÍS this Friday the prize in the digital and print journalism category for a report on the accident at the El Pinabete coal mine in Coahuila, Mexico, in August 2022, where 10 miners lost their lives.
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The report, written by journalist Alejandro Santos Cid, with photography by Mónica González Islas and titled “The impossible rescue of the Pinabete miners: ‘I don’t know why I’m alive. Nobody was going to live there’”, reconstructs the tragedy through the voices of the survivors, family members, and rescuers who carried out an unprecedented operation. The article was published in the EL PAÍS Mexico edition.
With exceptional narrative, the work provides a detailed account through testimonies of how five men managed to survive in an air bubble, the dramatic escape of some by climbing through hoses, and the aftermath they still suffer. The survivors did not receive any compensation.
The rescue of the bodies of the deceased miners from more than 60 meters deep took almost three years, and is considered an extraordinary engineering feat. But the report highlights the lack of accountability for the incident and the families’ claims about the responsibility of the Mexican Government, which later turned the rescue into a political success.
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The NAHJ Ñ Awards recognize the best of Spanish-language journalism in the United States, in categories including print and digital press, radio and television, audio, photography, data and multimedia, as well as investigative, civil rights, and student journalism, among others.
The NAHJ, founded in 1984, is the country’s leading organization for Hispanic journalists, with over 4,000 members. The organization seeks to promote Latino representation in the media and coverage of Hispanic communities, and offers scholarships and training. The awards were announced at the NAHJ’s annual conference in New Orleans, where EL PAÍS, along with its director Jan Martínez Ahrens, has been present throughout the week.
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