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Anastasia Austin on Muck Rack

Anastasia Austin

Latin America (LatAm)
As seen in: MSN, BBC, BBC Travel, Business Insider, The Guardian, Yahoo Canada, Al Jazeera English, Substack, Mongabay, AOL UK and
Covers:  Security, migration, organized crime, human rights, geopolitics, and the environment
Freelance investigative journalist and security analyst | anastasia.g.austin@gmail.com | former InSight Crime investigator | mostly on Bluesky

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Anastasia Austin’s Biography

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Award-winning investigative journalist, focusing on organized crime, corruption, and the people who fight it.

After five years with InSight Crime, where I led complicated field investigations in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, I am embarking on a new project, cycling from Colombia to Argentina and reporting from the continent’s remote corners along the way.

My work has been republished and cited by CNN, El Nuevo Herald, El País, Business Insider and others.

One of my …

Anastasia Austin’s Journalist Portfolio

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Why Antarctica's Power Struggle Is Coming to Argentina's Southern Tip

Why Antarctica's Power Struggle Is Coming to Argentina's Southern Tip

In the Argentine city of Ushuaia, global competition for Antarctica is spilling into daily life.

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A 1,400km bike ride through Patagonia along the 'End of the World' trail

A 1,400km bike ride through Patagonia along the 'End of the World' trail

Wild, rugged and breathtakingly beautiful, Patagonia is one of the most stunning places on Earth - and the be…

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High risk yet home to thousands: the makeshift towns at the mercy of landslides and floods in Per...

High risk yet home to thousands: the makeshift towns at the mercy of landslides and floods in Per...

Like many informal settlements, communities that have sprung up on the edges of Ayacucho in the Andes are on …

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How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins

How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins

When the birds started nesting on her land at Useless Bay, in Chile, Cecilia Durán Gafo decided she would pro…

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Peru bets on bamboo to restore nature in its main coca-growing region

Peru bets on bamboo to restore nature in its main coca-growing region

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Peru bets on bamboo to restore nature in its main coca-growing region

Peru bets on bamboo to restore nature in its main coca-growing region

PICHARI, Peru - It's nearly 5 p.m., and the bamboo grove is filled with children. In silence, they're looking…

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Articles

Indigenous water systems gain ground as climate pressures intensify in Bolivia

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By Anastasia Austin
| Mongabay Verified
When a 2022 drought hit Bolivia’s Ascensión de Guarayos, restoring traditional paúros helped the community survive after the municipal reservoir ran dry. The youth-led effort to revive paúros has grown into a broader conservation project, including a legally protected urban ecological corridor. The initiative is part of a global trend to restore Indigenous water systems as low-cost, climate-resilient solutions to growing water scarcity.
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A 1,400km bike ride through Patagonia along the 'End of the World' trail Original

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By Anastasia Austin
| BBC Travel Verified
Douwe den Held (Credit: Douwe den Held) Wild, rugged and breathtakingly beautiful, Patagonia is one of the most stunning places on Earth – and the best way to appreciate this wild frontier is on a bike. For most of the day, the pampas appeared raw and deserted. The paved highway and tour buses had long vanished from view, and I pedalled a lonely gravel road used by just a handful of Argentine cowboys and cyclists. Then, without warning, the wind stilled and the landscape began to stir.
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How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins

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By Anastasia Austin
| MSN Verified
Five pairs of rubbery feet carry velvet-sheathed black-and-white bodies towards the rope line separating the king penguins from the dozen or so visitors, who look on in awe. As these emissaries shuffle over, a hundred of their cohorts parade on a nearby bank, splashing around in the water and regurgitating food into their chicks' open beaks. The king penguin ( Aptenodytes patagonicus ) makes its home almost exclusively on islands in the Southern Ocean.
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Interview

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What was your first job as a journalist?

InSight Crime - pivoted from law and IR

Have you ever used a typewriter?

no. But I remember my mom typing away at one when I was six and being excited to have my own someday.

How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?

email. Give me a top line and a nut graf

Awards

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Inter-American Journalism Association Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP)

2024 - Periodismo en Profundidad

Arduo, minucioso y magistral trabajo de indagación y consulta de fuentes periodísticas, realizado durante 17 meses. Una investigación, con carácter de denuncia, que supera los criterios de excelencia periodística, y que sobresale por la calidad de sus textos y las imágenes que la acompañan. La contextualización histórica constituye uno de sus grandes aciertos. Un trabajo de equipo —redacción, fotografía, diseño e ilustraciones— integral. Notable repercusión a escala nacional, donde se le consideró uno de los mejores trabajos investigativos de la década.

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Fetisov Journalism Award - Shortlist

2024 - Outstanding Investigative Reporting

Investigative reporting holds power to account and is the bedrock of public interest journalism. Entries in this category may focus on the detailed examination of injustice, corruption and wrongdoing in public life or may provide revealing insights into important data and information that is hidden from public view. This journalism promotes transparency, revealing the true causes of events and how investigative reporting is essential to uncovering secrecy, exposing those responsible for malpractice or other activities that may be harmful or criminal. Evidence of impact on public opinion and, where appropriate, follow-up action to deal with abuse of power, will be expected outcomes of this reporting.

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Solas Award for Best Travel Writing

2025 - Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers -- Gold

The most inspiring tale of aid, comfort, philanthropy, or caring for others in faraway places, or of being the recipient of a stranger’s largesse

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