On July 15, a blast from an AK-47 rifle simultaneously felled a young newspaper publisher in Mexico and rekindled concerns about the growing dangers journalists face in Latin America.
Benjamin Flores, 29, published La Republica, a scrappy newspaper in San Luis Rio Colorado, on the other side of the border with Arizona. Two arrests have been made in connection with his killing, but it is unlikely the Mexican government will catch the probable killers–the narcotraffickers Rubio had profiled in a series of investigative reports.
Freer economic and political systems during the past decade or so have led to a freer, more aggressive journalism in Latin America. That shouldn’t come as a surprise: Information is the lifeblood of effective economic and electoral choices.
The recent killings, however, suggest that Latin American journalists nowadays face double jeopardy. Traffickers, money launderers and others in the narco underworld show no compunction about intimidating or killing reporters who dare expose their activities, while some governments are returning to threats and other types of restrictions on the press.
According to the Inter American Press Association, based in Miami, during the past nine years 69 journalists have been killed in Colombia, 20 in Mexico, 18 in Peru and 16 each in El Salvador and Guatemala. Most of these killings were somehow linked to the drug traffic.
But governments, too, seem taken aback by the new aggressiveness of the press, both print and electronic. The Peruvian magazine Caretas revealed on July 25 that President Alberto Fujimori may not have been born in the country and, thus, is ineligible to hold the highest office. In addition, a television station uncovered a government network of nearly 200 wiretaps–118 of them on journalists, including The New York Times’ correspondent in Lima.
In Mexico, the Reforma and La Jornada newspapers, and the magazine Proceso, among others, have pursued the scent of government scandals with the enthusiasm of hound dogs and needled the government ceaselessly to keep the recent elections clean. Still, the principal threat to reporters in Mexico today is not the government but drug traffickers.
In other countries, however, impatient rulers are resorting to a variety of old-fashioned remedies to muzzle rambunctious media. In Colombia, the government is threatening to revoke the licenses of TV stations that have aired reports of President Ernesto Samper’s narco connections or that criticize his handpicked presidential candidate. In Argentina, the slaying of a photojournalist–allegedly by someone with government connections–remains a mystery.
And in the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Gov. Pedro Rossello last April withdrew millions of dollars of government advertising from El Nuevo Dia newspaper, after it published a series of investigative reports on government mismanagement.
Old habits are hard to break, and one of the oldest in Latin America is government manipulation or suppression of press freedom in the name of patriotism, economic progress or national emergencies. Yet an unfettered press is the best ally of a government truly seeking political reform, economic prosperity or to stamp out the scourge of drugs.
