Latin America has extraordinary investigative journalism, the best in the world. There are people who conduct amazing, meticulous investigations and publish 600-page books that are incredibly enjoyable to read.
I’m reading La llamada [The Call] by the Argentinian journalist Leila Guerriero, and it’s one of those books of investigative journalism that is not only fascinating to read but also has a definite literary quality. To write the book, Guerriero delved deep into the life of Silvia Labayru who, in the 1970s, belonged to a leftist domestic terrorist organization in Argentina called the Montoneros. Labayru was kidnapped by the military dictatorship and tortured, but she survived and now lives in Madrid. Guerriero spent years in weekly and often daily meetings with Labayru, hanging around, listening, participating in her daily life, trying to build a relationship and gain her subject’s trust.
Labayru’s story is complicated. She has been shunned by her fellow militants for a variety of reasons. As a former member of a terrorist organization, there are things that she doesn’t want to reveal or probably even remember. There is a lot that she and other militants remember differently. Often very differently. It is only because Guerriero put in an extraordinary amount of time, patience, and kindness that she managed to get all of these people to talk to her about their violent and often tragic past.
I will talk about the book itself and the fascinating things I learned from it later, but the point I want to make right now is that there is no aspect of what Guerriero created in this book that any form of artificial intelligence will ever be able to touch. The book is a product of a human relationship.
Guerriero is a very talented journalist. Her skill in organizing the narrative woven out of the testimonies of many different people is outstanding. The book is extremely easy to follow. Guerriero very wisely avoids making the story about herself. The only American journalist of this caliber is Sam Quinones. In Latin America there are many, and I’m overjoyed that I discovered a new one in Guerriero.
AI or no AI, we will absolutely need journalists, but these have to be people who don’t want to go down an easy path and just phone things in without putting in any effort. When you read Leila Guerriero’s book, you feel overpowered by the admiration for the professionalism of this journalist, who is so excellent at what she does.
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