Live theater tells the story of how Mongabay detected narco airstrips in the Amazon

Mongabay Latam's multiyear, *award-winning **investigation that uncovered 67 clandestine airstrips in the Peruvian Amazon used for drug trafficking sent waves across the local media landscape. It drew attention to the Indigenous communities impacted by these illegal airstrips and the 15 Indigenous leaders who were killed defending their territory. To communicate this story to a wider audience, Mongabay Latam director Maria Isabel Torres and managing editor Alexa Vélez adapted it into an interactive live theater performance for an audience of 100.

They join this week's podcast to tell the "story behind the story" of what they, their reporters, and Indigenous leaders experienced during this investigation, and how their play adaptation brings that to the eyes and ears of a theatrical audience.

"I think that all the journalists in these times, we are very worried [about] trying to find ways to understand our audience and to get their attention. We know that there are news avoiders. We know that there are fake news. So we are trying to look for different ways," Torres says.

*This story was first published by Mongabay Latam in Spanish on Nov. 12, 2024, and won the 2025 Global Shining Light Award for investigative journalism and the Digital Storytelling prize given by the 2025 Future of Media Awards.

**This investigation was conducted in partnership with the Consortium to Support Independent Journalism in the Region (CAPIR), which leads the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Latin America.

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Image: In the Indigenous community of Galilea, drug traffickers abandoned this airstrip a year ago. But they could revive it at any time. Image by Mongabay Latam.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Chasing answers on narco airstrips

(13:38) Ground-truthing the data and building relationships

(18:41) Risks, impacts and beyond

(28:55) Bringing the story to the stage

(36:13) "The story behind the story"

(44:48) Plans for the future