An international network led by Latin American drug cartels and the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah has chosen West Africa, among the poorest and more corrupted corners of the world, as the nexus for illegal trade in cocaine, oil, counterfeit medicines, pirated music and human trafficking. International law enforcement officials say the profits fuel terrorist activities worldwide.
Guinea Bissau: A Narco State in Africa
Published June 22, 2009
When Marco Vernaschi, an Italian photojournalist, decided to head to the West African nation of Guinea Bissau, he knew that cocaine traffickers had already destabilized the tiny former Portuguese colony. But when he arrived on the scene shortly after the country's president and army chief were brutally assassinated last March, Vernaschi saw a place spiraling into a gangster's paradise. He has documented the chilling impact of the drug trade in places like Bolivia, and spent months in Guinea Bissau getting to know drug gangs from the inside.
He shares with iWitness how he captured such intimate portraits of assassins, addicts and prostitutes caught up in a trade that is relatively new to the country but leaving a devastating mark.
Marco Vernaschi's photo essay "Cocaine Coast" published in Virginia Quarterly Review's Winter 2010 edition is a finalist for ASME's National Magazine Award 2011 for News and Documentary...
In February, Pulitzer Center-sponsored journalist Marco Vernaschi won first place in the World Press Photo Contest for General News in the Stories category for his work on narco-trafficking in Gui
Gateways
Grantee
Marco Vernaschi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1973, and he's currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He's currently working on a large, long-term project about the phenomenon of child witches,...
