The outlook for journalism in autocracies that oppress researchers and restrict freedom of expression is bleak.
That is the conclusion of the talk
Dictatorships that persecute journalists
this Sunday at the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias.
In the romantic Adolfo Mejía Theater of the walled city, Carlos Manuel Álvarez (Cuba), Laura Aguirre (El Salvador) and Alfredo Meza (Venezuela) spoke, who do journalism that the power does not tolerate from outside their countries.
The dialogue, in which the intimate relationship between democratic pluralism and freedom of information was evident, was led by event with Jan Martínez Ahrens, director of EL PAÍS América.
Panel 'Dictatorships that persecute journalists' at the Hay Festival in Cartagena de Indias.CHELO CAMACHO
The three journalists have suffered, in one way or another, harassment and pressure from the governments of their countries.
Aguirre, director and founder of
Alharaca
, is the one who points out a less acute situation, but with the most recent deterioration.
She explained that in El Salvador, “little by little the guarantees of freedom of expression and access to information are being undermined.”
Although there are no journalists in prison as in other countries, "we are aware that this can happen, there are concrete actions that lead to it."
She argued that they face censorship that she calls low intensity, due to the immense popularity of President Nayib Bukele, who does not need greater pressure or the bad image of more attacks to remain in power.
This censorship goes beyond the famous case of pressure on
El Faro,
with attacks on less visible media or journalists, which seek to instruct the entire sector.
He mentioned the case of Mariana Belloso, to whom Bukele responded in X covering one of his press conferences.
The presidential criticism, Aguirre says, was the beginning of unprecedented online harassment against the editor of
Alharaca
.
This violence escalated to misogynistic threats, such as raping her and her daughters, with not only psychological but also physical effects.
Later the Government intercepted her communications with the Pegasus software, which led her to exile.
Laura Aguirre at the Hay Festival in Cartagena.CHELO CAMACHO
The other example that Aguirre presented is that of Carolina Maya, the head of the environmental journalism outlet
Mala Hierba
.
His father was arrested by the State, applying the emergency regime that has existed since May 2022 and allows suspects of being criminals to be imprisoned for more than 2 years, without a trial and in conditions of confinement that for some human rights NGOs are equivalent to torture.
All of this caused deep anguish in Carolina, Aguirre said.
For all these reasons, the director of Alharaca who lives in Berlin is not very optimistic about what is coming for journalists in her country.
“We hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst,” she summarized in Cartagena.
However, she does not expect the Government's attacks to increase, since the current scheme has helped keep Bukele's popularity so high that he is surely headed for his re-election.
In the case of Cuba, the journalist and writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez presented a much more negative panorama, but at the same time colder, more impersonal;
more of a totalitarian State than a personalist dictatorship, and a much longer path of attacks and censorship.
He related that independent media began with the birth of
14ymedio
, in 2014, at a time when the Cuban State was dedicated to reopening relations with the United States. “That generated a kind of outbreak or enthusiasm that lasted one or two years. room to consolidate before the State, especially the political police, deployed a dismantling strategy,” he explained.
Carlos Manuel Álvarez during his panel intervention.CHELO CAMACHO
Young recently graduated journalists who had founded the media were harassed until they had to go into exile, as the only expedient to avoid ending up in prison, he said.
“Both I and other colleagues of my generation have suffered wear and tear due to a repressive arc that begins with a certain harassment, and then moves on to frequent arrests and interrogations, to fabricate a case about being an agent of a foreign government.
If that doesn't work, family pressures come, blackmail, repeated express imprisonments” which, he explained, initially produce rejection, but when repeated they tire public opinion.
If nothing works, the destination is clear: departure from the island, which is not always a voluntary exile.
“I am not an exile, I am an exile,” he declared about his case.
The author of
The Intruders
cannot board a flight to return to Cuba, he has no way to return to the streets of his childhood.
With prohibitions like the ones he suffers, he explained in the talk, the Government seeks to prevent Cuba's civil society from organizing.
He clarified that these pressures are not the same for all journalists, since the repression is greater for those outside Havana or those who are less known.
“Political power knows what punishment to give to whom,” he concluded, while pointing out that there is no hope of any political change and, therefore, of any improvement for journalists in his country.
More optimistic is Alfredo Meza, one of the founders of the investigative medium
Armando.Info
.
He explained that in his native Venezuela the Government has managed to create a strong information hegemony, especially through its control of television, in which media such as his or the
Cocuyo Effect
achieve a less massive impact than the plurality that previously existed on the radio, the written press or television.
Alfredo Meza speaks during the panel, January 28, 2024.CHELO CAMACHO
This hegemony has been achieved with government or related media, but also with procedures such as montages and judicial accusations against independent journalists.
An example is that the murder of prosecutor Danilo Anderson, in 2004, with the unusual use of a bomb, ended with the indictment of several people critical of the Government, including the journalist Patrica Poleo.
The former director of the newspaper
El Nuevo País
then went into exile in Miami, and since then she has lived in the United States. In a recurring resource, Meza detailed.
Less than a week ago, the Prosecutor's Office ordered the capture of journalist Sebastiana Barráez, along with 10 other people, for an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro and the governor of Táchira.
The protagonist of the talk, in fact, was a victim of another similar situation.
Armando.Info
was the medium that revealed the irregularities in the participation of the Colombian Alexa Saab in different public contracting schemes with the Venezuelan Government, which earned them a defamation lawsuit.
Among its possible effects were years in prison and the bankruptcy of the media, so Meza and three other colleagues had to go into exile.
Other mechanisms, such as removing the passports of some journalists seeking to leave the country and the administrative burden of recovering them, undermine trust.
Added to all this is the country's economic debacle, which has led many journalists to look for other sources of income, in Venezuela or abroad, as part of a wave of migration that led the country to lose approximately 20% of its population.
Unlike his colleagues, Meza maintains hope, based on a change in political power. Despite the recent disqualification of opposition candidate María Corina Machado, and the still uncertain response of the opposition to that decision, the journalist points out that Polls show strong support for change.
“That makes it difficult to say that Venezuela is not going to have real change,” he argued in Cartagena, although he accepted that in the past it has already happened several times that “that hope for change does not materialize in a free election.”
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