Anabel HERNÁNDEZ

Anabel Hernández is a Mexican investigative reporter and writer known for her investigative reporting on corruption, drug trafficking, organized crime and the abuse of power in Mexican politics.

In her early days starting out as a journalist at Reforma in 1993, Anabel worked local news stories and learned to collect information directly from sources on the street. By the time she was working at Milenio, she knew enough to break ‘Toallagate’ in 2001. Toallagate saw Anabel uncover the vast public expenditures on the residence of President Vicente Fox, for which she was awarded the National Journalism Award in Mexico in 2002. Anabel reported that the president's office had spent around 440,000 USD to redecorate two cabins in the presidential compound. Her report caused immediate controversy as Fox had promised during his election campaign to run a government of austerity. His popularity subsequently plummeted in the polls and his wife and at least four others lost their jobs in his administration.

In her best known book, Los Señores del Narco / The Drug Traffickers (2010, Grijalbo Mondadori Sa), Anabel details the complicities between organized crime and high-level authorities, from government officials to the police, the military and businessmen. She analyzes the evolution of drug production and trafficking in Mexico since the 1970s and reveals the alarming role played by Mexican government officials and agents from the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. Using testimonies and official reports gathered during a five-year investigation, the book describes in painstaking detail the process by which Mexico has become the epicenter of the mega-cartels in Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. She has received death threats from both state and non-state actors in reprisal for the book’s publication. This 2013 the publishing house Verso Books will publish the English translation called: “Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers”.

In March 2012 was laureate of the WAN-IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom. In November 2012 she published her last book “Mexico in Fire”. Actually in Mexico she publish her investigations in the news paper Reforma and in the magazine Proceso.