Freelancing Adventures
in Latin America

He’s been stalked by a paramilitary group while investigating environmental conflicts in Latin America. He was invited to dinner by the mother of an MS-13 gang member. He spent an afternoon with the ousted president of Honduras.

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This is not the life of some movie character. These are just some of the adventures Jared Olson, a student at Flagler College, has been on.

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As a freelance journalist, Olson has been able to travel to many Latin American countries, reporting on social struggles, environmental conflicts, and violence. He said freelancing has given him the opportunity to skip working at a low-level desk job to choose the people and places he wants to cover.

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“It’s sort of its own like self-made path,” Olson said. “That’s a total freedom that, for all the stresses of it, is pretty exhilarating and awesome.”

 

Earlier this year he moved to Honduras to spend more time reporting on conflicts there while finishing a paid internship with The Nation. Olson will be living off of his freelancing job for the first time while abroad, putting his energy into investigating and building relationships with the locals.

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“There are some big prize stories, things that you know are going on and you hear on the street,” Olson said. “They might be totally different than what I realized, but that’s the point of journalism. It’ll be an adventure and I’m excited.”

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Olson grew up in the cities of Winter Park and Deland but has been interested in Latin American culture since high school. It was at that time that he also fell in love with journalism.

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“It dawned on me at some point, because I loved writing, I loved reading about what was going on in the world and I also cared for social justice, that journalism was actually a good way to combine those three things,” Olson said. “And just the sense of adventure and romance that comes with it. You get to go spend time with totally different people and try to understand what’s going on in their lives and convey that to another audience.”

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Olson’s first taste of Latin America came from a spring break trip to Cuba. With a shoestring budget and newly acquired fluency in Spanish, he and two friends ventured outside of the U.S. for the first time. He made an effort to talk with the people, learning about their complicated relationship with communism and the Castro regime as well as what they loved about their country.

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He would later return to the island for a study abroad program where he met with journalist and friend of the Castro brothers, Marta Rojas, as well as young journalists from an underground anti-government magazine.

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But it was his trip to Guatemala in 2018 that set his sights on working abroad. He and a friend went to report on the poverty crisis and immigration. Coming face-to-face with the harsh reality of the rural and indigenous communities was eye-opening, and he realized the broad influence the United States had over the countries closest to it.

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“The fact is that our zone of influence as Americans is in Latin America and Central America,” Olson said. “It’s kind of our responsibility if we’re trying to fight for justice too, as journalists, focus on what our country is doing. So, after the fact that kind of solidified my desire to just keep working there.”

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In the summer of 2018, Olson earned a Pulitzer grant to report on the Zapatista movement in Mexico. He met with survivors of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas and documented their experiences of the government-sanctioned bloodbath.

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Since then, Olson has focused on environmental conflicts and organized crime in Honduras. Last year, he wrote an article for Vice, sitting down with MS-13 members as they sorted through and smoked chemically-laced marijuana. He described his time with the gang as a cool situation to be in despite the danger.

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“I’m kind of a scaredy-cat,” Olson said. “That being said, it’s pretty insulting if a foreign journalist [says] ‘Oh my God, it’s so scary. I don’t know how I’ll do it.’ And, well there are nine million people who live there, and they’re trapped there. You just got to have some perspective; if other people can do it, then you’ll probably be relatively fine.”

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But Olson described his work on environmental stories as scarier than with MS-13 due to government interest in the conflict.

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“In those places, there are paramilitary groups and death squads that are directly tied to the Honduras special forces,” Olson said. “We felt that we were being stalked on two occasions. And that was actually scarier than just being in an environment with gangsters where the worst thing that happens is like a few dudes start shooting. You just get down and you just run straight away.”

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Accompanied by a photographer friend and a list of contacts, Olson doesn’t actually know when he will return to the U.S.

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“I have a lease for six months on the place so anywhere from six months to forever.”

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