Latin American Journalists Under the Gun

...In October 1997, Vdlez left Colombia with Vol XXXII, No 1 JULY/AUG 1998 0 ID 0 S o 7UPDATE / MEDIA assistance from the International Red Cross...

...In its 1997 Annual Report on the Press and Democracy, the Peruvian press rights group Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) noted that almost all the attacks on journalists in that country last year "bear the mark of the Peruvian intelligence services, which has made it its mission to keep tabs on independent journalists...

...The attack was reported by human rights and press freedom organizations around the world...

...In recent years, Blancornelas had been relentlessly pursuing the Arellano Felix brothers, two prominent drug kingpins in the region...

...Harassment against journalists has also stepped up dramatically...

...show an alarming increase in attacks against media professionals in 1997...

...The Knight Foundation, which derives its income from the parent company of the Miami Herald and other Knight-Ridder newspapers, funded an extensive study by the Inter-American Press Association of the unpunished killings of journalists in Latin America...

...Of the 26 killings worldwide documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Paris-based Reporters sans Frontiers last year, ten were in Latin America-four in Colombia, three in Mexico and one each in Brazil, Guatemala and Argentina...

...The Ivcher case also raises an issue that is usually overlooked in most analyses of the Latin American press-the many ways in which the media is used by business and polit- ical elites to fight their own internal battles...

...When investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti began writing sto- ries linking drug money to the Panamanian electoral campaign of President Ernesto PCrez Balladares, the government tried to deport him...

...In this vacuum, journalists have emerged as important actors, exposing corruption, abuses of authority, and the political and financial power of drug traffickers...

...There is an immense loss of faith in institutions...

...and European foundations, such as Reporters sans Frontiers, which is funded by the European Union, have increasingly taken up the cause of press freedom in Latin America...

...In response to the most recent wave of attacks, new groups of journalists' associations have also sprung up in Latin America...

...The murder of Cabezas and Yabrin's suicide have not only raised questions about the intricate webs of corruption at the highest levels of political and economic power in Argentina, but also about the role of the media and the very real dangers faced by journalists in Latin America's neoliberal democracies...

...After the businessman shot himself, the Argentine press was filled with reports of a "presumed suicide" and open-ended questions: Was Yabrin really dead...

...Governments throughout the region are using restrictive legislation, such as immigration, licensing and libel laws, to silence the journalists who are working to break through the shroud of secrecy and impunity that protects political and economic elites...

...printed alongside...

...Journalists working on the Sunday supplement of the daily El Comercio were threatened prior to the publication of an interview with a former police captain now seeking political asylum in Miami...

...Among them is Richard Vl1ez, a cameraman for a daily television news program...

...These violent attacks, as well as the growing number of lawsuits filed against journalists, are not isolated phenomena...

...Did he really kill himself or was he killed because he knew too much...

...Alfonso Romo Garza, the second- richest man in the country according to Forbes and a dominant force in agrobiotechnology, insurance and other industries, recently purchased a substantial interest in the newspaper El Financiero, Mexico's leading business and financial daily...

...Cabezas was on assignment coverBarbara Belejack is a freelance writer based in Mexico City...

...Chumpitaz was the leader of a local journalists' association and the couple worked for a program called "La Voz del Pueblo...

...Victor Hernmndez Martinez, a police beat reporter for the magazine Como, was severely beaten after leaving the office of the Federal Judicial Police in Mexico City and died the next day...

...began reporting on abuses cornrnit- ted by the military intelligence ser- vices and on the inexplicable wealth of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's shadowy alter-ego, Israeliborn Baruch Ivcher was first stripped of his citizenship and later of ownership of his television sta- tion...

...He had recently published an emotional and taunting letter to Ram6n Arellano Felix from a woman described only as a "grieving mother" whose son had worked for Arellano Felix and was later murdered under his orders...

...His brutal murder evoked the worst days of Argentina's dirty war...

...communications technology as well as the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the prospect of a trade agreement between Mexico and the European Union have led international media observers to intensify their efforts to protect press freedom in the region...

...In Colombia, a controversial television licensing law was enacted in an attempt to punish those who have been most critical of President Ernesto Samper, who has personally spearheaded the attack on the media...

...Gorriti had fled his native Peru in the aftermath of the 1992 autogolpe and President Alberto Fujimori's crackdown on the press...

...Jose Arrieta, the former head of the Investigative Unit at Channel 2, fled to the United States last January and is currently seeking asylum...

...Suddenly, a group of soldiers attacked him, demanding that he give up his camera...

...Following the photographer's murder, Noticias ran pictures of Yabrdn on the cover of several issues...

...While they face threats against their lives due to their work as reporters, they increasingly work for newspa- pers, magazines and TV sta- tions owned by powerful busi- ness groups who set the media's agenda-and thus, to a large extent, the political agenda throughout the region...

...Press rights groups are currently investigating the deaths of ten journalists killed in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru as of early June this year...

...According to the CPJ, three Mexican journalists were killed in 1997 as a direct result of their reporting activities...

...In November of 1997, Jesus Blancornelas was severely wounded and his bodyguard was killed when gunmen opened fire on them...

...Angel Piez, head of the Investigative Reporting Unit of the Lima daily La Repablica, received a death threat from an unidentified source following the publication of articles on the National Intelligence Service's telephone tapping of journalists and politicians...

...They are able to mobilize attention around individual cases, but they are not a replacement for a functioning judiciary...

...Cabezas's body was found not far from the home of Eduardo Duhalde, the current governor of the province of Buenos Aires and a major contender in Argentina's upcoming presidential elections...

...Each country has its own peculiar media history that is part of its political, economic and social history...

...At their best, they have the same value and limitations as NGOs and human rights organizations of any sort...

...The army was not supposed to have any weapons other than some tear gas grenades, but V6lez filmed soldiers armed with machetes and rifles firing into the crowd...

...For individual journalists, the problem is two-fold...

...The lawsuits were filed against journalists trying Vol XXXII, No 1 JULYIAUG 1998 9 UPDATE/ MEDIA to investigate the nearly $30 million loan he received, funneled through Panama and the Cayman Islands, from Ratil Salinas, the brother of former president Carlos Salinas...

...The death of Yabrin, however, only adds to the confusion and skepticism of an already skeptical society...

...Corporate pressures-the tyranny of ratingscombine with political pressures to make truly investigative journalism the exception rather than the rule...

...Maribel Gutinrrez, who has won international recognition for her coverage of the 1995 massacre of 17 peasants in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero, which eventually led to the resignation of the state governor, has faced repeated harassment and has been accused by state authorities of being a member of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR...

...ON-- 1111 AM U (ILA'- 8 ALIAREPORT ON THE AMERICASAugust 1997, Samper spoke at an unprecedented conference in Guate- mala City organized by the Miamibased Inter-American Press Society (IAPA...

...Although figures vary widely among press rights groups, all the reports Left: A flyer circulated by the Argentine Association of Photojournalists which reads "Do not forget Cabezas...

...For seven years Vl1ez covered local cops, special security forces and the military for the news program "Colombia: 12:30'"V6lez's job title was reportero de orden pfdblico, but by any other name, he was a war correspondent...

...In another case, when the Peruvian television station Frecuencia Latina Colombian cameraman Richard Velez (right) was brutally beaten by a group of soldiers and eventually forced to leave Colombia after capturing image5 (left) of the army's violent drugeradication campaigns in southern Colombia...

...But more recently a disturbing pattern has emerged...

...Attacks against journalists, moreover, are symptomatic of chronically weak judicial systems, Kafkaesque law enforcement and endemic impunity...

...ing a party in Pinamar, after which he was kidnapped, handcuffed, shot and burned beyond recognition...

...On May 20, 1998, Alfredo Yabrin, a leading Argentine businessman and the main suspect in a criminal investigation that sent shock waves through the government of President Carlos Menem, committed suicide at one of his estates in the province of Entre Rios, 180 miles north of Buenos Aires...

...U.S...

...In Mexico City, several newspaper and television reporters working on stories about police involvement in criminal activities were kidnapped, beaten and threatened by armed men over the past year, while in Chiapas two photographers covering the recent deportation of foreign observers were attacked by state judicial police...

...The new editor, who was appointed in March of this year, is a former government official who served as head of communications during Samper's controversial electoral campaign...

...At least five journalists have been killed in Colombia this year, while four were killed last year, including Gerardo Bedoya, the opinion page editor of the Cali daily El Pais who was shot to death just days after writing a column recommending the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States...

...Because of their dependence on external funding, moreover, they are unlikely to examine the problem of growing media concentration...

...The following year, the elusive businessman appeared on the cover of Noticias in an innocent beachside photo taken by Cabezas...

...Despite the much celebrated restoration of democratic rule and its alleged protections of press freedom, harassment of and violence against journalists is on the rise throughout Latin America...

...Columnist Fabio Castillo decided to remain on staff, and he and two other columnists voiced their doubts about the new management's com- mitment to editorial freedom in a letter to the new editor and pub- lisher, saying that their continued tenure at the paper depended on continued editorial autonomy...

...Jesus Abel Bueno Le6n, editor of the weekly Siete Dias in Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero, was found dead in his burned-out car with multiple bullet wounds on his body...

...Her name has reportedly come up in torture sessions, as interrogators have attempted to force their victims-including Razhy Gonzflez, editor of a weekly from the neighboring state of Oaxaca-to link Gutirrrez to the insurgent group...

...In addition, a number of journalists have been repeatedly threatened and harassed...

...Flores had been writing about local drug traffickers, state and local politicians and police corruption, and had been sued five times by former Sonora governor Manilo Fabio Beltrones...

...The the past...

...Recently, the IPYS reported threats against his family in Peru...

...This past April, radio journalist Isabel Chumpitaz Panta and her husband, broadcaster Jos6 Amaya Jacinto, were brutally murdered in their home in Piura in northern Peru...

...The study was the basis for the conference organized by the IAPA in Guatemala City last year, where organizers held a public "trial" in which witnesses testified about the cases of six journalists in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico...

...With the restoration of civilian governments and the end of the civil wars in Central America, the number of attacks on journalists in the region appeared to subside...

...Judge Jos6 Luis Macchi had issued a warrant for his arrest five days earlier after a former policeman's ex-wife testified that Yabrn was behind the murder of photographer Jos6 Luis Cabezas, whose body was found in a badly burned car in the seaside resort of Pinamar on January 25, 1997...

...The following day, their letter-which was intended as a private communi- cation-was published in the news- paper's "Letters to the Editors" sec- tion under the ominous heading, "Unfortunate Resignations...

...Most of the staff resigned in protest to these developments...

...His colleagues managed to save the tape that was in his camera and the images were broadcast throughout the country...

...In 1995, former finance minister Domingo Cavallo accused Yabrin of being a mafia boss...

...In August 1996, he was sent to southern Colombia to cover the demonstrations of campesinos protesting the eradication of the local coca crop...

...Publisher Alejandro Junco sat on the board of one scandal-ridden bank, a fact which was not ini- tially disclosed in the newspaper's coverage of the ongoing scandal...

...The tally of deaths and attacks is only part of a story...

...On one cover, the smiling face of the President peers from behind a mask of Yabr.n with the words "Is Yabrin Menem...

...There are significant differences, moreover, within the media of any given country...

...In Argentina, Periodistas, and journalists in general, have managed to keep alive the case of Jos6 Luis Cabezas which, unlike any other killing of a journalist in that country, galvanized an entire profession in defense of press freedom...

...Chumpitaz's brother, also a journalist, was severely wounded in the attack...

...Despite the well-publicized exceptions, such as the killing of Jos6 Luis Cabezas, it is still far more dangerous to be a journalist working outside the major media organizations and outside major cities, where local bosses operate with greater impunity and journalists are isolated from-and not infrequently ignored by-their big-city colleagues...

...Far more frequent are incidents of harassment and intimidation...

...Soon after reports of the incident were broadcast, he began receiving telephone threats, mysterious visits to his house and "sympathy" cards wishing him "peace" in his grave...

...Cabezas worked for Editorial Perffl, a national publishing giant whose glossy news magazine Noticias covers the country's political scandals while its celebrity magazine Caras glorifies the lifestyles of the rich and famous-in many cases the same politicians and business tycoons raked over in the pages of Noticias...

...Vdlez's problems, however, were just beginning...

...Last December the Cano family sold its controlling interest to Colombia's Grupo Santo Domingo, a powerful business group since rechristened as the Grupo Bavaria...

...The story of Baruch Ivcher is not simply about freedom of speech, but also about the complex and still shadowy dealings between Ivcher and Montesinos...

...In the context of the Guatemala conference, his com- ments could only be interpreted as the most perverse kind of cynicism...

...As the editor and co-founder of Zeta, a muckraking Tijuana weekly, he had accumulated a lifetime of enemies in over two decades of border journalism...

...The magazine's other cofounder, H6ctor "El Gato" Felix Miranda, was shot to death in 1988...

...Yabrin was not pleased and is reported to have said that "taking a photograph of me is like shooting me in the head...

...Cases involving journalists have slowly made their way to the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission and the Inter-American Court, where there are now plans to create the office of special rapporteur for freedom of expression...

...But throughout the region, the media continue to be both message and messenger...

...This was certainly the case with Frecuencia Latina in Peru...

...The record of these organizations is mixed...

...In Mexico, TV Azteca owner Ricardo Salinas Pliego has the unique distinction of having filed more libel lawsuits against journal- ists than anyone else, according to Joel Simon of the CPJ...

...Among them are IPYS in Peru and Periodistas in Argentina, whose founders include veteran journalists Jacobo Timerman and Horacio Verbitsky and novelist and journalist TomBs Eloy Martinez...

...Samper told those assem- bled that in Colombia the media was responsible for fostering a climate of violence...

...From the start, suspicion hovered around Yabrin, who made his fortune through diverse ventures like air and postal freight that directly capitalized on his close relationship to President Menem...

...In Mexico, attacks against journalists have also increased dramatically...

...The Latin American media are hardly monolithic...

...No one believes anything that is said...

...The third victim was Benjamin Flores, a 29-year-old editor and publisher at La Prensa in the border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, who was shot to death in the parking lot outside the newspaper's offices...

...With the advent of neoliberal democracy, there has been a marked concentration of political and economic power at the same time that mechanisms of accountability-legislatures, courts and other institutions like political parties-are weak or without credibility...

...Among the most notable exam~les is the case of Colombia's El 3pectadol...

...V6lez was severely beaten and spent two weeks in the hospital...

...Other governments in the region have also used restrictive legislation to go after "problematic" journal- ists...

...The motive for the killings remains unclear...

...Right: Alfredo Yabrdn being escorted to testify before a Buenos Aires court on January 25, 1997 during the investigation of Cabezas' murder...

...They are painfully public reminders of the failings of Latin America's neoliberal democracies...

...considered one of the ~ountry's most respected newspa- pers...

...The Cabezas case and the suicide of Yabrin reveal the profound state of moral decay in Argentina"' says Tom.s Eloy Martinez...

...As Joel Simon, Americas director of the CPJ, notes in the Committee's 1997 report on attacks on the press, "government officials, powerful economic actors and criminal elements including drug traffickers have responded to efforts to probe their activities by lashing out at the press, often through lawsuits, often through violence...

...Complicating the story of the photographer's death were the internecine twists of contemporary Argentine politics and the fierce infighting among the political elite...

...The newspapers El Norte and Reforma, often cited as beacons of press freedom in Mexico, are both owned by a Monterrey family with links to powerful local business groups...

...Its editors and reporters have long been the targets of violence, as was the case of the late Guillermo Cano, who was mur- dered at the order of Pablo Escobar in 1986...

...olombia has long been considered the most dangerous place for journalists working in Latin America...

...P erhaps the most insidious threat to press freedom in Lat- in America is the increasing concentration of the media in the hands of a few powerful conglomer- ates, a trend that has been all but obscured by the long litany of phys- ical and legal attacks...

...In 8NMJI REO...

...He now lives in New York City and is awaiting the outcome of his asylum case...

...Inter- national pressure forced the Panamanian government to relent, but Gomti now faces a libel suit with a potential six-year sentence...