AP photographer wins Gabriel Garcia Marquez award

Associated Press photographer Esteban Felix on Wednesday won the journalist images category of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez International Journalism Award for his work on sugar cane workers affected by chronic kidney disease in Nicaragua.

Associated Press photographer Esteban Felix on Wednesday won the journalist images category of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez International Journalism Award for his work on sugar cane workers affected by chronic kidney disease in Nicaragua.

Felix, a Peruvian who is based in Nicaragua, described the winning project, "Bitter Sugar: A Mystery Disease," as a multimedia and photography effort about the cane cutters at the San Antonio sugar plant.

"These people die of chronic renal deficiency after working at the plant for a certain number of years for reasons that are still not very clear," Felix said.

Ronald Alvarado applies a coat of fresh paint on his daughter's grave at a cemetery in El Crucero during the All Saints Day celebrations, on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

The other winners were Alejandro Almazan of Mexico in the features and reporting category for "Letter from the Lagoon." The news coverage prize went to Lucio Castro of Brazil for "Memories of Chumbo - or Soccer in the Times of the Condor," and Colombian Olga Lucia Lozano and her team won in the innovation category for their "Project Pink."

The awards are named for Colombian novelist Garbriel Garcia Marquez, a Nobel literature laureate.