Michelle García

Michelle García is a multiplatform journalist based in Mexico City and working on a forthcoming book about masculinity, organized crime and the U.S.-Mexico border.

García is the director/producer of the documentary Against Mexico-the making of heroes and enemies, which was funded by Latino Public Broadcasting and featured on PBS.org. She reported and produced video reports for Time.com, the multimedia site for the magazine, on the violence in Ciudad Juarez, the construction of the border fence in South Texas and the plight of the Sahrawi refugees in the Sahara desert.

She is a former producer/reporter for Independent Sources, a public television program covering New York City’s ethnic media and immigrant communities. 

She is the co-founder and director of the Border Mobile Journalism Collective, a citizen journalism video project on the U.S.-Mexico border created in collaboration with the National Black Programming Consortium.

García wrote for The Washington Post from the paper’s New York bureau for three years. Her essay, appeared in the Post’s Style section and became the inspiration for her documentary project, (work in progress) “Tell’em Who You Are.” 

 Her work has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Christian Science Monitor, Salon, The Nation, Sojourners, Amnesty magazine. The Scripps Howard News Service has distributed her editorials and commentary.

Michelle began her career as a public radio reporter in Washington DC. She reported for NPR’s Justice Talking, Day to Day, Latino USA and PRI’s The World, Marketplace and the Next Big Thing. Her public radio documentaries include investigations into the spread of HIV/AIDS on the U.S.-Mexico border, women and violence in El Salvador and labor abuses in the post Katrina Gulf Coast.

In 2006 García was awarded a Knight fellowship through the International Center for Journalists. She was assigned to work in El Salvadar. She has taught at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism and delivered reporting workshops. She sits on the advisory board member of Women Action and Media and is a media critic for the Women in News and Media.

Laura Varela, consulting Producer, is a San Antonio-based filmmaker and media artists, originally from El Paso, Texas. Her projects are community-based focusing on issues of social justice and cultural preservation. She has produced several documentaries, narrative, experimental films and video installations including: As Long as I Remember: American Veteranos. This project was also selected for funding by Latino Public Broadcasting (part of the CPB Minority Consortia) and is currently in post-production with an intended PBS broadcast in 2010.

Maribel Falcon, a native of West Texas, is pursuing her education in Austin, Texas. She advocates, activates, and educates herself through volunteering, community organizing, and studies social political movements and required college classes. Don’t be fooled. While she likes to have fun, she is part of the movement.