Laura Klein | Latin America Fellow
Lucia Newman. Image supplied by Lucia Newman.
Lucia Newman is an award-winning broadcast journalist, war correspondent, previous head of the CNN bureau in Mexico and Cuba and current Latin America editor for Al Jazeera. Her experience communicating Latin American news to the rest of the world spans decades, multiple coups, US invasions, natural disasters and of course the countless positive moments in between. She is a Chilean American who studied in Australia and currently resides in Santiago, Chile.
The following is a snapshot of her career interwoven with quotes as told to the author in an interview in late July 2024.
“It all had to do with Pinochet. I ended up in Australia because [of] the first 9/11 in the world. Everyone remembers the twin towers, but this, from my point of view, was by far the most traumatic one and the 1st one of any consequence…”
General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, better known simply as Pinochet, was the leader of the military junta that overthrew the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, on 9 September 1973. Born from this event is a legacy of suppression of thought and persecution that manifested during this period in the closure of higher education institutions and the fleeing of persons associated with ideologies adverse to the regime. In this context, Lucia Newman at the age of 21 immigrated to Australia. She went on to complete a degree in journalism and work in the newsroom of the 028 Network, precursor to SBS, where in her own words-
“...was where I became absolutely enamoured of the news that was taking place at the time in Central America - the wars in Nicaragua and in El Salvador specifically, that were at the time, the epicentre of the cold war. They were, that was, the story of the age, of the decade.”
The history
Consequent United States (US) intervention in Latin American States throughout the second half of the 20th century was normalised to the point that it features in most contemporary discussions on the global consequences of US hegemony. However, vital intricacies of this era are largely lost on a modern audience, whose understanding of the region is masked by the mostly negative images portrayed in the media. Important lessons can be drawn that would otherwise not be possible without the evidence and experience of Lucia and other war correspondents.
By the 1980s, major civil wars and left-wing revolutions had erupted across Central America. Lucia soon found herself in the middle of a civil war in Nicaragua.
In Nicaragua, in 1978, dictator Anastasio Somoza held power. He was a member of a US-backed dynastic family who had ruled Nicaragua since 1937. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLM) was an insurgency founded to rid Nicaragua of the Somozas. In 1984, Somoza eventually fled Nicaragua and Nicaraguans held general elections deemed fair by international observers with the Sandinista’s Daniel Ortega winning the presidency. In response to the Sandinistas popularity, from early 1981 the Reagan administration began funding and arming the Contras, a counterinsurgent army. A bloody civil war ensued between the two sides. The reasoning behind Reagan’s Nicaraguan fixation was ultimately based in the fear of communism and revolution spreading in the US’s backyard. He stated that “the Sandinista leadership met in secret and…described themselves as the vanguard of a revolution that would sweep Central America, Latin America, and finally, the world. Their enemy, they declared: the United States.”
As both a victim of the US-backed dictatorship in Chile and an independent journalist working for western news organisations, Lucia was uniquely placed to report on the conflict.
“Soviets started helping and funding the Nicaraguan government, so … you had the perfect Cold War scenario [of] the US vs Russia, … [At the time] I was not aware just how slimy some of these Sandinistas were … I could only see the big picture. Having come from Chile, I could [also] see the hand of the United States, again, trying to crush an independent liberation movement … so, who was worse? It was hard. It wasn't my job to make that decision.”
Lucia was further plagued by the US’ support for the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) dictatorship in El Salvador.
“[In] El Salvador, conversely there was a very, very right wing government with death squads, murdering people, innocent people, women, children, suspected opponents, priests, nuns you name it, in the most gruesome ways and the United States was giving them money… The US always seemed to be supporting the bad guy [in Latin America]. And the good guy, who may not have been good in the long term, was the result of that support for the bad guy.”
It was in the midst of this history that Lucia in her own words, “became a [CNN] war correspondent. I went straight from the comfort of Sydney Australia to a [region] that was falling apart at the seams.”
“[One day] I was sitting around minding my own business having a sandwich somewhere and a guy [who was the head of the international desk at CNN] offered me a job … I accepted on one condition, that the stories were done from the South to North and not North to South”
Lucia’s prerequisite rejected the approach of Americans to journalism in Central America at the time. In her own words, the American correspondents that she knew personally
“would [almost] never leave the hotel, because the people who would go out to cover the war would be the Latin Americans- the cameramen, the fixers, etc. They just had no clue, but they already had an idea of what the story was, they had pretty much written it already … I was amazed. This was not the way I was used to doing journalism.
Having already worked with the ABC (Australia) and BBC, Lucia was well-accustomed to hands-on reporting. ”We had gone to the war zone, we almost got ourselves murdered, you know the things that you do when you're a foreign correspondent, but not the US ones. So I said, you guys come down here with your story already done and then you look for the stuff to fill it in with but if we can do real reporting the other way around then sure I will take a crack at it…”
From these insights, correlation arises between the American journalistic status quo and the medium's ability to be manipulated to feed US narratives during this period. Lucia’s own philosophy on journalism and her time in the field has been shaped by these experiences.
“If you're a journalist of any sort, you have something to say and you want people to know things.You shed light on things that you want to expose, realities, truths about people or about situations that are completely unknown… or distorted, they are not what they seem and I think that, that is what I try, what I have tried to do all my life from day one, till this very day.
Being a journalist gives you access to the world and this is the big privilege of being a journalist [to see things that] you would never otherwise be exposed to. It gives you the freedom to, A, basically satisfy your boundless curiosity and, B, meddle in everything which sounds terrible but is exactly what it is…”
As a woman in journalism
As a woman in the field, Lucia’s words paint a candid image of the nature of being a war correspondent in Latin America.
“There were few female photographers who were doing that [being war correspondents] and a few women journalists. We were just starting to get exposure and we were of course the minority, and people just assume you aren't as smart, you’re not as aggressive, and that sometimes works in your favour… [For example] rather than shooting you first and asking questions later, they just kind of go, well what are you doing here? …
In El Salvador, I remember this so well, you ask questions to an assassin, to an assassin general, that you knew had killed maybe, oh I don't know, thousands of people and they just let their guard down a bit more because you are a woman.
These days however, women have come a long way, so now we aren't cut as much slack and we certainly are not assumed to be stupid … However, we still do not get paid the same. There is still male chauvinism in the salary department as you know, in the CEO department. Everything all women know about, that is also true in journalism.”
The Latin American international journalistic landscape today
Today, the Cold War paradigm of the region's conflict is a thing of the past. This has pushed Latin American stories from the epicentre of western news rooms in the second half of the 20th century to the periphery in the 21st.
“Latin America isn't on the map. That's why I am working for Al Jazeera because we are the only English language network that covers Latin America … that isn’t done by anybody else.
[In the case of Latin America] it's normally the doom and gloom and unless there's a military take over, a coup-d'etat or an earthquake maybe, there's no coverage, and that's a pity … so people just don't consume the news… the scope of reality, of what happens in the world has been reduced paradoxically at the same time that our ability to cover has been made so much easier.”
The current western news-media ecosystem, beholden to oversaturating algorithms, restricts consumers to limited not just content and viewpoints. Lucia recognises the detriment of this behaviour.
There is something about the first world that makes you get very cosy and comfortable and you don't pay attention to the rest of the world until maybe it's too late.”
Laura Klein is the Latin America Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. She recently completed her Bachelor of International Relations at the Australian National University majoring and minoring in Spanish and Latin American Studies, and has since been accepted to a Masters program at the London School of Economics where she looks forward to further engaging in research. She has a deep affection and respect for the Latin American region and in her writing, strives to destigmatise and promote the opportunities that abound in Latin America, especially to an Australian audience.
Comments