The Nieman Foundation for Journalism has noted that he has “described mass shootouts that no one else writes about, obtained and described videos of revenge executions, and revealed how the few arrested for the mass murder of women in Juárez are often innocent stooges.”[1] Howard Campbell, author of Drug War Zone, has called Corchado “the top American journalist covering Mexico today” whose “knowledge of the Mexican political system, the drug trade, and modern Mexican society is non-pareil.”[2] Corchado currently lives between El Paso and Mexico City[2] but calls the border home.
[8][9][10][11][12][13] Corchado later said that his parents felt that he, as the oldest child, should set an example for his younger siblings, and that UT at El Paso was the perfect place to prepare for a career as a foreign correspondent because it is situated “right on the border, so that when you park your car and walk to the campus you're looking at another country right before your eyes.” He has stated that most Americans “don't really know Mexico,” but UT at El Paso was a “unique place” that provided “a bridge between these two countries,” which he desired in his journalism.
He traveled around Cuba extensively on many occasions, reporting on a range of topics, before helping to open the newspaper's Havana bureau, which was one of the first U.S. news bureaus to be established in that country.
His discovery that the Juárez cartel and a U.S. informant had played roles in the killings led to an internal U.S. inquiry and to the removal of high-ranking officials in the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency.
[7] In November 2012 he wrote that Enrique Peña Nieto, who was about to be sworn in as president, “takes over a nation of nearly 117 million with a resurgent economy that has become one of the most competitive in the world, surpassing Brazil in annual growth rate.
Drug killings, which have been the top priority for Mexicans, aren’t over by any means, but they appear to be receding.”[19] Interviewed on NPR in November 2012, shortly after the presidential election in Mexico, Corchado described the country as “very divided.
[22] The book has been praised by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder as “the story of a journalist’s dangerous and notable efforts to report on Mexico’s horrible drug wars.
The book covers the story of the great Mexican American migration spanning the late 1980s to today, drawing from the experiences of Alfredo and three of his closest friends: David Suro Piñera, a restaurant owner and tequila connoisseur, Ken, a successful litigator involved in the Philadelphia political scene, and Primo, a human rights activist fighting for causes on both sides of the border.
What does it mean to be American and become part of its diverse mainstream, integrate into its colorful tapestry, its noble ideals and timeless democratic principles?”[23] Corchado's new book has been praised by many including David Axelrod, who commented, "This personal, moving tale illuminates the very heart of the polarizing immigration debate that is roiling America today.
He took part in the U.S.-Mexico Forum in February 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the International Studies Department at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).
Nonetheless, he has continued to work a beat that, as the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has noted, “scares off most other journalists....In this savage climate, Corchado has refused to back down.”[9] Corchado has said that Ciudad Juárez, the city in which he covered his “first story...as an aspiring journalist,” was also the “first place I received a death threat when I tested the limits of our fledgling democracy as a journalist.”[7] He has written, “They say that in Mexico they kill you twice: Once by dropping your body in acid or blowing your head off with semiautomatic weapons, and then by spreading rumors about you.
'”[10] He has expressed gratitude that his parents, by emigrating to the U.S., had made it possible for him “to obtain a little blue passport that says I am a citizen of the United States of America,” saying that “I have perhaps a naïve, but unwavering belief that if something is to happen to me, there would be consequences to pay.
[10] In 2007, Corchado received a tip from a “trusted U.S. intelligence source” that the Zetas, a paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf Cartel, would be killing an American journalist within 24 hours.
[36] For his coverage of drug trafficking and government corruption along the border, Corchado received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courage in journalism, bestowed annually by Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
Corchado is in a long-term relationship with Angela Kocherga, the border bureau chief for Belo TV, a Texas-based television corporation owned by the same company as the Morning News.