It had from the beginning an international perspective in reporting with the backing of Publicaciones Semana S.A. of Colombia, BB&M of Panama, and Reader's Digest of Mexico, and first edited by Miguel Silva and Rafael Molano.

[1][2] Starting in July 2006 with issue N. 70, Gatopardo moved and remains based in Mexico City, keeping the same editorial style and Latin-American perspective, but providing a greater coverage on Mexican topics.

From its beginnings, Gatopardo's objective was to challenge the monothematic and specialized cultural publications that proliferated from the 1980s onwards and, instead, to defend modern reportage, the chronicle and any narrative journalistic text that explored beyond the merely informative.

[citation needed] To begin creating texts and images, the founders brought together a distinguished group of collaborators that included writers Antonio Tabucchi and Juan Villoro, renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado and journalist Tomás Eloy Martínez.

However, Gatopardo differed in the range of topics and the angles in which they were approached, since they were primarily focused on Latin America: "It is a monthly magazine of well-told stories about people of power, art, current affairs, where the most exciting chronicles of anonymous characters and celebrities are concentrated and where the secrets of everyday life are revealed".