Ibéyise Pacheco
Born in Maracaibo (Zulia State, Venezuela) when Ibéyise was still studying
Social Communication at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, she approached
two worlds in which she has managed to work successfully: journalism and
literature.
In the historic Diario de Caracas, she began at the crime section where she
refined what has finally been her mark in the practice of journalism:
investigation. With just a few months in El Diario´s newsroom, she convinced her
bosses that there was a big case in Maracaibo that would cause an international
scandal, as indeed it happened. It was about “Los Pozos de la Muerte”, the
disappearance of young people in the hands of police agencies. The
investigation required locating the bodies of some disappeared and a little more
than four months after their first complaint, the finding was achieved. Five human
remains were found in a cistern south of Maracaibo, the Zulia state capital.
Since then, Ibéyise has tenaciously sought to stay in investigative journalism. In
1988 he won the National Prize for Journalism, investigation mention, for his
follow-up to the case of “Manzopol”, a parallel police force accused of being
involved in the crimes of extortion and drug trafficking. As a result of this
journalistic investigation, the Minister of Justice, José Manzo González, resigned.
She continued with investigative journalism when she joined the staff of the
newspaper El Nacional, where three years after joining as a reporter she was
tempted to take on new responsibilities: first she was appointed chief of the then
C section (Lifestyle), and later chief editor, while in parallel she managed blow up
high-profile cases involving crimes by people in power. In that same company,
Ibéyise was head of the popular newspaper Así es la Noticia, where the political
persecution against her began.
While directing Así es la Noticia, Ibéyise maintained a radio program on the
stations Kyss, first, and Mágica, later. She also made her debut in a television
program called “En Privado”, broadcast by Venevision. The weekly program was
the audiovisual reply to her column called the same, which she published every
Friday in the newspaper El Nacional.
The worsening of the political crisis was in charge of removing Ibéyise from all
those media, while in a ruthless persecution she was the object of 17 judicial
processes that even led her to suffer a house sentence until Hugo Chávez ended
up ordering on the television network that the trials against her and other
journalists cease.
Ibéyise published her first book in 2006, “Bajo la sotana, confesiones del padre
Pablo”.
Five years later, her book “Sangre en el diván”; the extraordinary case of the
psychiatrist Edmundo Chirinos, became an editorial phenomenon to this day.
The success spread to the theater as a monolog masterfully interpreted by actor
and theater director Héctor Manrique, and on television a version called
“Demente Criminal” produced by Venevisión Internacional and Unimas, has been
placed on Netflix.
At the end of 2012, in the same style of investigative reporting, “El Grito
Ignorado” published the painful story of a boy who died at the age of five as a
victim of violence. The book continues to replicate its success with new editions
by Editorial Planeta.
On December 27, 2014, Ibéyise took a plane to Miami with the baggage limit, but
with overload on her heart. Three years later she wrote “Las muñecas de la
corona”, the crimes and the perversion of Chavismo in power. The publication
meant a significant approximation towards the novel. It is a thriller that takes
place between Venezuela and Miami and that exposes the bloody corruption of
the dictatorship of her country and its dramatic consequences under impunity
and decadence. Once again, Ibéyise denounced the complicit society. Beauty
pageants are the focus of a series of events, in a Venezuela where immorality is
the law.
“Las muñecas de la corona” became an immediate publishing success and was
among the ten best-selling books in Miami between January and June 2018.
There were also consequences and the Miss Venezuela pageant was shaken,
changing its structure. The most significant was the departure of Osmel
Sousa, called “the czar of beauty”.
In May 2020 Ibéyise published “Los Hermanos Siniestros” which in less than a
week was classified by Amazon as the number one bestseller in Spanish.
In “Los Hermanos Siniestros” Ibéyise was once again inspired by the Venezuelan
reality. This time she portrayed two wicked brothers who represent the great and
deliberate evil with which the elite of the Maduro regime exercises power.
Ibéyise is a weekly contributor to “Diario Las Américas” and continues
tenaciously investigating issues that lay bare reality.