On May 20, 1998, Alfredo Yabràn, 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. Judge José Luis Macchi had issued a warrant for his arrest five days earlier after a former policeman’s ex-wife testified that Yabràn was behind the murder of photographer José Luis Cabezas, whose body was found in a badly burned car in the seaside resort of Pinamar on January 25, 1997. Cabezas worked for Editorial Perfíl, a national publishing giant whose glossy news magazine Noticias cov-ers 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.
Cabezas was on assignment cover-ing a party in Pinamar, after which he was kidnapped, handcuffed, shot and burned beyond recognition. His brutal murder evoked the worst days of Argentina’s dirty war.
From the start, suspicion hovered around Yabràn, who made his fortune through diverse ventures like air and postal freight that directly capitalized on his close relationship to President Menem. In 1995, former finance minister Domingo Cavallo accused Yabràn of being a mafia boss. The following year, the elusive businessman appeared on the cover of Noticias in an innocent beachside photo taken by Cabezas. Yabràn was not pleased and is reported to have said that “taking a photograph of me is like shooting me in the head.” Following the photographer’s murder, Noticias ran pictures of Yabràn on the cover of several issues. On one cover, the smiling face of the President peers from behind a mask of Yabràn with the words “Is Yabràn Menem?” printed alongside.
Complicating the story of the photographer’s death were the internecine twists of contemporary Argentine politics and the fierce infighting among the political elite. 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. The murder of Cabezas and Yabràn’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.
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. But more recently a disturbing pattern has emerged. 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. Although figures vary widely among press rights groups, all the reports show an alarming increase in attacks against media professionals in 1997. 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. Press rights groups are currently investigating the deaths of ten journalists killed in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru as of early June this year.
These violent attacks, as well as the growing number of lawsuits filed against journalists, are not isolated phenomena. 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. In this vacuum, journalists have emerged as important actors, exposing corruption, abuses of authority, and the political and financial power of drug traffickers. As Joel Simon, Americas director of the CPJ, notes in the Committee’s 1997 report on attacks on the press, 11 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.”
Colombia has long been considered the most dangerous place for journalists working in Latin America. 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 Paiss who was shot to death just days after writing a column recommending the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States.
In addition, a number of journalists have been repeatedly threatened and harassed. Among them is Richard VéIez, a cameraman for a daily television news program. For seven years Vélez covered local cops, special security forces and the military for the news program “Colombia: 12:30 ” Vélez’s job title was reportero de orden público, but by any other name, he was a war correspondent. In August 1996, he was sent to southern Colombia to cover the demonstrations of campesinos protesting the eradication of the local coca crop. The army was not supposed to have any weapons other than some tear gas grenades, but Vélez filmed soldiers armed with machetes and rifles firing into the crowd. Suddenly, a group of soldiers attacked him, demanding that he give up his camera. Vélez was severely beaten and spent two weeks in the hospital. His colleagues managed to save the tape that was in his camera and the images were broadcast throughout the country. The attack was reported by human rights and press freedom organizations around the world.
Vélez’s problems, however, were just beginning. 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. In October 1997, Vélez left Colombia with assistance from the International Red Cross. He now lives in New York City and is awaiting the outcome of his asylum case.
In Mexico, attacks against journalists have also increased dramatically. In November of 1997, Jesus Blancornelas was severely wounded and his bodyguard was killed when gunmen opened fiire on them. 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, Héctor “El Gato” Felix Miranda, was shot to death in 1988. In. recent years, Blancornelas had been relentlessly pursuing the Arellano Felix brothers, two prominent drug kingpins in the region. He had recently published an emotional and taunting letter to Ramón 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.
According to the CPJ, three Mexican journalists were killed in 1997 as a direct result of their reporting activities. Jesus Abel Bueno León, 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. Víctor Hernàndez Martítiez, 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. The third victim was Benjamín Flores, a 29-year-old editor and publisher at La Prensa in the border town of San Luis Río Colorado, who was shot to death in the parking lot outside the newspaper’s offices. 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.
Far more frequent are incidents of harassment and intimidation. Maribel Gutiérrez, 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). Her name has reportedly come up in torture sessions, as interrogators have attempted to force their victims—including Razhy Gonzàlez, editor of a weekly from the neighboring state of Oaxaca-to link Gutiérrez to the insurgent group. 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.
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.” This past April, radio journalist Isabel Chumpitaz Panta and her husband, broadcaster José Amaya Jacinto, were brutally murdered in their home in Piura in northern Peru. Chumpitaz was the leader of a local journalists’ association and the couple worked for a program called “La Voz del Pueblo.” The motive for the killings remains unclear. Chumpitaz’s brother, also a journalist, was severely wounded in the attack.
Harassment against journalists has also stepped up dramatically. Angel Pàez, head of the Investigative Reporting Unit of the Lima daily La República, 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. 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. Jose Arrieta, the former head of the Investigative Unit at Channel 2, fled to the United States last January and is currently seeking asylum. Recently, the IPYS reported threats against his family in Peru.
The tally of deaths and attacks is only part of a story. Govermnnents 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. 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. In August 1997, Samper spoke at an unprecedented conference in Guatemala City organized by the Miami-based Inter-American Press Society (IAPA). Samper told those assembled that in Colombia the media was responsible for fostering a climate of violence. In the context of the Guatemala conference, his comments could only be interpreted as the most perverse kind of cynicism.
Other governments in the region have also used restrictive legislation to go after “problematic” journalists. When investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti began writing stories linking drug money to the Panamanian electoral campaign of President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, the government tried to deport him. Gormiti had fled his native Peru in the aftermath of the 1992 autogolpe and President Alberto Fujimori’s crackdown on the press. International pressure forced the Panamanian government to relent, but Gorriti now faces a libel suit with a potential six-year sentence. In another case, when the Peruvian television station Frecuencia Latina began reporting on abuses committed by the military intelligence services and on the inexplicable wealth of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s shadowy alter-ego, Israeli-born Baruch Ivcher was first stripped of his citizenship and later of ownership of his television station. The Iveher 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 political elites to fight their own internal battles. This was certainly the case with Frecuencia Latina in Peru. 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.
Perhaps the most insidious threat to press freedom in Latin America is the increasing concentration of the media in the hands of a few powerful conglomerates, a trend that has been all but obscured by the long litany of physical and legal attacks. For individual journalists, the problem is two-fold. While they face threats against their lives due to their work as reporters, they increasingly work for newspapers, magazines and TV stations owned by powerful business groups who set the media’s agenda-and thus, to a large extent, the political agenda throughout the region.
Among the most notable examples is the case of Colombia’s El Espectador, considered one of the country’s most respected newspapers. Its editors and reporters have long been the targets of violence, as was the case of the late Guillermno Cano, who was murdered at the order of Pablo Escobar in 1986. 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 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. Most of the staff resigned in protest to these developments. Columnist Fabio Castillo decided to remain on staff, and he and two other columnists voiced their doubts about the new management’s commitment to editorial freedom in a letter to the new editor and publisher, saying that their continued tenure at the paper depended on continued editorial autonomy. The following day, their letter-which was intended as a private communication-was published in the newspaper’s “Letters to the Editors” section under the ominous heading, “Unfortunate Resignations.”
In Mexico, TV Azteca owner Ricardo Salinas Pliego has the unique distinction of having filed more libel lawsuits against journalists than anyone else, according to Joel Simon of the CPJ. The lawsuits were filed against journalists trying to investigate the nearly $30 million loan he received, funneled through Panama and the Cayman Islands, from Raiúl Salinas, the brother of former president Carlos Salinas. 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. Publisher Alejandro Junco sat on the board of one scandal-ridden bank, a fact which was not initially disclosed in the newspaper’s coverage of the ongoing scandal. 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. The business interests of media owners will no doubt have a chilling effect on media coverage, much like political pressure and cooptation have in the past.
Ironically, dramatic changes in 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. U.S. 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. 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. 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. Cases involving journalists have slowly made their way to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the Inter-American Court, where there are now plans to create the office of special rapporteur for freedom of expression.
In response to the most recent wave of attacks, new groups of journalists’ associations have also sprung up in Latin America. Among them are IPYS in Peru and Periodistas in Argentina, whose founders include veteran journalists Jacobo Timerman and Horacio Verbitsky and novelist and journalist Tomàs Eloy Martínez. The record of these organizations is mixed. At their best, they have the same value and limitations as NGOs and human rights organizations of any sort. They are able to mobilize attention around individual cases, but they are not a replacement for a functioning judiciary. Because of their dependence on external funding, moreover, they are unlikely to examine the problem of growing media concentration.
In Argentina, Periodistas, and journalists in general, have managed to keep alive the case of José Luis Cabezas which, unlike any other killing of a journalist in that country, galvanized an entire profession in defense of press freedom. The death of Yabrán, however, only adds to the confusion and skepticism of an already skeptical society. After the businessman shot himself, the Argentine press was filled with reports of a “presumed suicide” and open-ended questions: Was Yabràn really dead? Did he really kill himself or was he killed because he knew too much? “The Cabezas case and the suicide of Yabrán reveal the profound state of moral decay in Argentina,” says Tomàs Eloy Martínez. “There is an immense loss of faith in institutions. No one believes anything that is said.”
The Latin American media are hardly monolithic. Each country has its own peculiar media history that is part of its political, economic and social history. There are significant differences, moreover, within the media of any given country. Despite the well-publicized exceptions, such as the killing of José Luis Cabezas, it is still far more dangerous to be 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—the big-city colleagues. Corporate pressures—the tyranny of ratings—combine with political pressures to make truly investigative journalism the exception rather than the rule. But throughout the region, the media continue to be both message and messenger. Attacks against journalists, moreover, are symptomatic of chronically weak judicial systems, Kafkaesque law enforcement and endemic impunity. They are painfully public reminders of the failings of Latin America’s neoliberal democracies.
ABOUT THE AUTOR:
Barbara Belejack is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
