A Mexican student wins the 2025 RFI Reportage Award

The 2025 RFI Reporting in Spanish Award has been awarded to Mexican student Isaac Vargas, from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. The award is open to journalism students under the age of 30 who are studying at a university in the Americas.

The 27-year-old Mexican student won the 11th annual award with his report titled "Arriving Home: Baseball as a Refuge for Venezuelan Migrants in Bogotá." The work immerses listeners in the stories of Venezuelan immigrants who, thanks to the hot baseball, find a piece of the homeland they had to abandon.

The jury members particularly appreciated this report for addressing the topic of migration from an original perspective: the importance of sport in immigrant identity. The jury also highlighted the immersive quality of the report in illustrating the local reality of a general topic.

The prize consists of a fully funded, four-week internship this year at RFI's Spanish-language editorial office in Paris.

The winner's name was revealed on June 4th during the closing ceremony of the RFI Latin American and Caribbean Partner Radio Meeting, held in Paris from June 2nd to 4th. The report was broadcast that same day on RFI's Spanish channel and on the website www.rfimundo.com as part of "Latin American and Caribbean Week in France," of which France Médias Monde is a partner.

The jury also decided to award a special mention to the report "The Future Between the Nets: Overfishing in the Bosphorus" by Colombian student María José Ballén of the Externado University of Colombia.

France 24 Spanish, which produces several bi-media radio and television programs with the RFI Spanish editorial team (On the Front Page, Carousel of the Arts, and Stopover in Paris), supports the Prize and will discuss the topic in the coming days.