Jeanette Erazo Heufelder, born in Bavaria to an Ecuadorian father and a German mother in 1964. She studied cultural anthropology in Munich, received a PhD from Marburg, and subsequently conducted field studies in the Andes and on the Galapagos Islands. She worked as a university lecturer before going on to write screenplays for documentaries, releasing portraits of Latin-American artists and female human rights activists. In her books she also dedicates herself to the phenomenology of social violence, for example, in her biographic essay »Gloria Cuartas« (1999), about a Colombian female mayor, which was released under the patronage of the UNESCO; or in »Der Smaragdkönig« (»The Emerald King«, 2005), a literary reportage about the world of the mine workers and the dons in the emerald valleys of Colombia, which was nominated for the Lettre-Ulysses-Award; or in her reportage »Drogenkorridor Mexico« (»Drug Corridor Mexico«, 2011). The author lives in Potsdam.