Reporter Cindy Carcamo moves to Food to cover the way we eat

The following announcement was sent on behalf of Food Editor Daniel Hernandez:

Cindy Carcamo has joined us as a staff writer in Food after a decade of covering multiple aspects of the immigration beat for the Los Angeles Times. She has proved to be a tenacious reporter in the field, capable of gaining access to some of the toughest situations that exist in our immigration system. Her story with video journalist Adam Perez about an unaccompanied minor from Guatemala named Gaspar, who struggled his way through Belmont High School while washing dishes all night at a restaurant in Westwood, became a viral social-media blockbuster in 2016. Carcamo identified the subject of Perez’s mini-doc, which became a reference point on debates about immigration reform.

For Food she’ll be bringing that rigor to another massive beat: what we eat. Her reporting will focus on how food intersects with immigration policy, labor issues, agriculture, economics and the environment. In that spirit, Carcamo recently published a Column One about the evolving presence of California Latinos in the state’s wine industry.

Carcamo has also been Arizona bureau chief and a national correspondent for The Times and is a former reporter for the Orange County Register. She has reported in Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. She’s the recipient of multiple awards for her work, including the 2019 Estlow Center Anvil of Freedom Award, a team Overseas Press Club Award and a 2017 Ruben Salazar Award, as well as being included in the CCNMA: Latino Journalists in California list of Top 45 Influential Latina Journalists in Los Angeles in 2017.

Carcamo is a native of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley and is Guatemalan American. She studied journalism at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and spent a year studying in Buenos Aires. She lives in Santa Ana with her husband and daughter Cora. Mother and daughter know their way around Disneyland pretty well.