What a reporter found when she investigated US military strikes on Venezuelan drug boats.

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Regina Garcia Cano was the reporter behind The Associated Press story that provided the first comprehensive account and identifies of some of the men killed in recent U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats.

In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s breathtaking northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives told Garcia Cano the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists, as alleged by the Trump administration, or leaders of a cartel or gang.

Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. The four dead men included a fisherman, a down-on-his-luck bus driver, a former military cadet and a local crime boss. Others included laborers and a motorcycle driver.

This is an interview of Garcia Cano by Del Quentin Wilber, her editor on the story.

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What kinds of challenges are there in this kind of reporting?

AP video journalist Juan Arraez and I faced several challenges in reporting this story, chief among them were sources’ very real fears of being punished — particularly by the Venezuelan government — for speaking to reporters.

Repression is not new in Venezuela, but the government of President Nicolás Maduro has intensified it since last year’s presidential election, when ruling-party loyalists declared him the winner despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. More than 2,000 people were detained in the days after the election, some over social media posts critical of the government.

The relatives of some of the men killed in the strikes were especially fearful of speaking to AP because police and state intelligence agents searched their homes shortly after their loved ones’ deaths.

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