Iñaki Makazaga, freelance journalist from Vitoria-Gasteiz

Iñaki Makazaga is a young freelance journalist borned in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1982. During last July 2008 he has done a serial of documentaries in unsafe and unhealthy places like district 3´s garbage dump at Guatemala capital. He also interviewed an ex gang membership leader that introduced him in the way the "maras" work.

Iñaki started his documentaries in Latin America in 2003 in Peru. He worked in Iquitos following social projects that worked with orphan kids; In Lima with battered women in the outskirts neighbourhoods; With Ashaninkas resistant to Sendero Luminoso in the jungle.

In 2006 he went to Bolivia where he visited communities of Guaraniés that still live like slaves in ranches. He followed Ché's trip and went all over "La Paz" with a street kid as a guide.

In Guatemala he got in touch with the projects of a NGO based in Pamplona called ONAY. He started visiting 'maya cachiqueles' villages in Huehuetenango. He heard about several illegal immigration histories to USA due to in some villages most of the men had left in search of a better future.

In Guatemala city, he visited district 3´s garbage dump, where he visited a school that educates women to get out of such places. He met a young girl who was orphan after her parents died on a landslide of rubbish. A mad armed and drunk pursued Iñaki and the two NGO women that were with him, till a woman called Milagro gave them shelter.

He also interviewed an ex-leader of a gang membership called M-8; he had his full body tattooed and was afraid if somebody identified him. Jailed, injured and with a son murdered, he embarked on a new life far away from violence.

Iñaki was interviewed last week in a local radio show. He presently collaborates with most important newspaper and communication media in Spain, and is actually based in Getxo-Bilbao.

He publishes and can be contacted in his own blog (spanish only available).