Maria Luisa Diaz de Leon, deputy editorial director of Excelsior, a daily newspaper in Mexico City, was in Southern Florida, where she was assigned to the Miami Herald.

“Being selected to be one of the 50 international journalists to participate in the presidential campaign of the United States has been one of the most relevant experiences in my professional life. I was able to witness one of the most important moments of American history, and probably the world: the election of Barak Obama, the first black President. But also, I saw how the United States is such a big, heterogeneous, contradictory county; but yet a nation integrated around principles and values shared and respected by the majority: liberty, democracy, creation of wealth and the respect of its institutions.