Our Team

Alexa Vélez

Alexa Vélez is general editor of Mongabay Latam and has more than 16 years of experience in journalism. As part of Mongabay, she has received two honorable mentions from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) for the journalism projects Tierra de Resistentes (Land of Resistants) and the special Ganadería y narcodeforestación: la lenta desaparición de los bosques en Centroamérica (Cattle ranching and narco-deforestation: the slow disappearance of forests in Central America). She was also part of the team that, together with the Bolivian newspaper El Deber, was awarded with the King of Spain Prize for the special report Mafia le arranca los colmillos al jaguar: el gran felino de América (Mafia pulls the fangs out of the jaguar: the big feline of America). Alexa has been a finalist three consecutive years for the National Journalism Award in Peru with investigative reports on the advance of drug trafficking in the territories of indigenous communities, illegal mining and oil pollution.

Fabiano Maisonnave

Correspondent in Amazonia for Folha de S.Paulo. He was also a correspondent in Caracas, Washington (DC) and Beijing. He holds a BA in History from the University of São Paulo (USP) and an MA in History from the University of Connecticut (USA) on a Fulbright scholarship. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Based in Manaus since 2016, he has produced hundreds of reports on the Amazon, including the series "Amazonia Sob Bolsonaro", in partnership with Lalo de Almeida, winner in the Environment category of the World Press Photo 2021 award.

Vanessa Romo Espinoza

Vanessa Romo Espinoza has been a journalist and researcher on Peruvian and Latin American Amazon issues for 15 years. She graduated with a Master's degree in Visual Anthropology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She has experience -- in Spanish and English -- writing, editing and researching news stories specializing in the Amazonian environment and indigenous communities. Vanessa received an honorable mention from the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) for Excellence in Journalism. She was a finalist for the National Journalism Award in 2018 and 2019, and was recognized by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).

Ítalo García Murayari

Ítalo García Murayari has worked as a Shipibo indigenous communicator in Ucayali since 1999. He is a bilingual educator by profession and has conducted radio journalism programs in Shipibo and Spanish. He has done internships as an indigenous communicator in 2010 and 2012 in Bolivia.

Sebastián Castañeda

Sebastián Castañeda is a freelance photographer born in Lima with experience covering environmental issues, social conflicts, indigenous communities, and emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. He has won awards in different categories in the Picture of the year Latin America, Picture of the year International and in the category of photojournalism in the National Journalism Awards and the awards for journalistic excellence of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

Lalo de Almeida

Lalo de Almeida studied photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy. He has been collaborating with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for 27 years. His works, in photo and video, were awarded by World Press Photo, Pictures of The Year International, and Rey de España. In parallel to photojournalism, he has developed photographic documentation projects such as "Distopia Amazônica", which in 2019 was a finalist for Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. In 2021, Lalo was awarded as Ibero-American photographer of the year by POY Latam.