Gustavo Gorriti has bad cancer and they want to put him in prison in Peru. Carlos Fernando Chamorro had to go into exile to avoid ending up in a cell in Nicaragua. And Carlos Dada had to move away from El Salvador. Many in Venezuela, Mexico and other countries in the region do not have it easy either. But worse is José Rubén Zamora, who has been imprisoned in Guatemala for almost two years, like others in the hemisphere, like Víctor Ticay. What “crime” did they all commit? Inform. They are the victims of the new offensive that independent journalists in Latin America face in these current times.
They all have another trait in common: they are uncomfortable. They address the issues that power—whether political or economic—prefers to go under the radar in their countries, to not raise waves, to maintain the status quo that benefits them. But as in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, these journalists are the ones who warn that the king is naked. It is bad that he despite the shame of the king and his vassals.
Many persecutions are pathetic; others, ridiculous, although all of them disturbing. And they keep going. Gustavo Gorriti faces criminal proceedings in Peru because he revealed acts of corruption in which his country’s political and business elite are up to their necks. But the Peruvian State, instead of moving forward against the thieves, threatens to put Gorriti, a giant of continental investigative journalism, in a cell if he does not reveal his sources.
As grotesque as it sounds, it is true. But Gorriti does not hesitate, just as he did not hesitate before the regime of Fujimori and Montesinos, which came to kidnap him for, as now, dignifying the profession. When I contacted him a few days ago, he appreciated the message and, true to himself to the grave, he asked me if he had a phone number that he was looking for to move forward with another newspaper article. Always more.
Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Carlos Dada are worried about Gorriti, while they themselves deal with their own storms. Both had to leave their countries, Nicaragua and El Salvador, to inform, too, about power. Neither Daniel Ortega nor Nayib Bukele are fans of their investigations. Why would it be?
To be clear: are all journalists barefoot Carmelites, as we say in Argentina? No. Is there corruption and duplicity in our profession? Yes. But let it be clear, too: power never complains about servile and accommodating journalists because those are the first to subordinate themselves, spread official propaganda and pay homage. Power persecutes the uncomfortable, those it cannot break or buy. To those who say, when in fact it is so, that the king is naked, even if the king is angry.
That explains why José Rubén Zamora is in a Guatemalan cell. He exposed government corruption. And it explains why Víctor Ticay was sentenced to 8 years in prison in Nicaragua for reporting on something as innocuous as a religious procession. But, of course… it was a procession that the government had not authorized and did not want it to become known.
The examples follow one after the other. The NGO Mexicans against Corruption and Impunity has a difficult time because its director, María Amparo Casar, thought of exposing corruption in the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But who thinks of it! So they go after her, accusing her of something false that supposedly happened 20 years ago. And in Venezuela they go for the directors of Armando.info, Roberto Deniz and Ewald Scharfenberg, with fallacious charges launched three days after it emerged that they would broadcast a documentary in the United States on the Alex Saab case, along with Frontline.
Of course, intimidating, persecuting and imprisoning journalists is not something new, nor is it limited to Latin America. It is enough to remember that the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021 to journalists María Ressa, from the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov, from Russia, for, precisely, their brave work under the most complex conditions. Nor is it a question of left or right. And this is how the Ortega and Maduro regimes share reprehensible practices with Bukele, and we can remember the diatribes of Donald Trump in the United States or those of Javier Milei in Argentina that led several renowned journalists—such as Jorge Lanata and Jorge Fontevecchia— to warn about the restrictions on press freedom that exist in the country together with the president of the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA), Paula Moreno.
But the most notable thing is that, like Gorriti at the head of IDL Reporters In Peru, many journalists more or less known throughout the hemisphere share another trait: they do not back down. Chamorro continues to lead Confidential from exile and Dada continues to lead The lighthouse, just like Casar, Deniz, Scharfenberg, Fontevecchia, Lanata and so many more. They are examples of what Marty Baron, legendary director of The Washington Post, responded when asked how they dealt with Trump’s attacks: “We are at work, not at war.” That is to say: “We are working, not at war.”
The key point, however, in all these cases, does not go through the journalists or the support they garner from colleagues around the world and entities such as the Center to Protect Journalists (CPJ, in English), the Inter-American Society of Press (SIP), the Gabo Foundation or the National Press Club of the United States, among many others, but by the citizens of each of those countries.
How is that? Often, the powerful seek to silence the journalist and, if he does not succeed, wear him down and reduce his social credibility. He wants society to think that “he deserves it” or, at least, that “he must have done something.” Therefore, citizen complacency or complicit silence with the attacks or, on the contrary, his support for the independent press make the difference.
Andersen already explained it in 1837: when finally someone – a child, too – shouted that the king was naked, the social reaction that followed marked the beginning of the end. Because the others began to whisper and then shout that, in fact, the king was naked. And then the sovereign understood that yes, they were right.
Let us not leave the Gorriti of our hemisphere alone, then.
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