Murders of journalists in Paraguay: 41 years of deadly censorship

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By Jorge Rolón Luna*

In a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle it was stated that homi­cide is the worst and most ex­treme form of cen­sor­ship. It rep­re­sents the clash be­tween the most rad­i­cal cen­sor­ship and the right to in­for­ma­tion, the ex­er­cise of which is the pre­con­di­tion for democ­racy and the rule of law. From an­other per­spec­tive, the mur­der of jour­nal­ists shows how hostage to crim­i­nal net­works a so­ci­ety can be.

When San­ti­ago Leguiza­món was mur­dered in 1991 in the city of Pe­dro Juan Ca­ballero, it was not only the “in­au­gu­ra­tion” of the as­sas­si­na­tion linked to the ac­tions of crim­i­nal groups in Paraguay, but also the ul­tra-vi­o­lent si­lenc­ing of jour­nal­ists through this sin­is­ter tool. From that mo­ment un­til to­day, al­most twenty jour­nal­ists have been mur­dered. The coun­try even re­ceived in­ter­na­tional con­dem­na­tion for its neg­li­gence and crim­i­nal neg­li­gence in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the case. A bal­ance of these events, where most of the episodes have had a clearly mafia-like stamp, re­veals some pat­terns that should be taken note of.

A ret­ro­spec­tive analy­sis shows that since the new cen­tury the mur­ders of jour­nal­ists have been re­peated al­most year af­ter year, prac­ti­cally with­out a pause (see graph 1). While in the 90s of the last cen­tury there were only 3 cases, be­tween 2001 and 2010 there were 6, and be­tween 2011 and 2020 we al­ready had 9 cases (al­most one case per year in that decade). The re­cent mur­der of Hum­berto Coro­nel opens the pre­sent decade.

Mur­der of jour­nal­ists per decade – 1991-2022

Source: Own with data from jour­nal­is­tic sources

As can be seen in Graph 2, the mur­ders of jour­nal­ists be­gan un­der the gov­ern­ment of Gen­eral An­drés Ro­dríguez, who was one of the pre­cur­sors of the drug traf­fick­ing busi­ness dur­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship of Al­fredo Stroess­ner (1954-1989). It may be equally for­tu­itous, but it is strik­ing that the high­est num­ber of mur­ders of jour­nal­ists the record, oc­curred dur­ing the gov­ern­ment of Ho­ra­cio Cartes. The busi­ness re­la­tion­ship of the for­mer pres­i­dent with known and sus­pected drug traf­fick­ers, in ad­di­tion to episodes of find­ing drug planes in his prop­er­ties, al­ways gen­er­ated sus­pi­cions. Dur­ing his gov­ern­ment 5 jour­nal­ists were mur­dered, com­pared to 3 cases dur­ing the gov­ern­ments of Nicanor Duarte Fru­tos and Luis A. González Mac­chi, 2 cases dur­ing the gov­ern­ments of Fer­nando Lugo (who gov­erned for 4 years) and Fed­erico Franco (who only gov­erned for one year). In the gov­ern­ments of Mario Abdo Benítez (who has not yet com­pleted his pres­i­den­tial term) and of An­drés Ro­dríguez and Juan Car­los Was­mosy, there was 1 case in each pe­riod.

Mur­ders of jour­nal­ists by pres­i­den­tial ad­min­is­tra­tion/​pe­riod 1991-2022

Source: Own with data from pub­li­ca­tions

Graph 3 il­lus­trates the ge­olo­ca­tion of the mur­ders of jour­nal­ists and it can be seen that Pe­dro Juan Ca­ballero is the city where more jour­nal­ists have been mur­dered (6 cases). In this city also a ra­dio sta­tion  had its an­tenna knocked down in 2015 and suf­fered an at­tack with grenades – yes, grenades – in 2016, not to men­tion that one of its jour­nal­ists had been mur­dered in 2014. It is fol­lowed by Con­cep­ción, with 4 cases (21%) and is an­other “narco” bor­der place, also risky for jour­nal­ism.

Graph 3. Jour­nal­ists mur­dered by town 1991-2022. In per­cent­ages

Source: Own with data from jour­nal­is­tic sources

The de­part­men­tal ge­olo­ca­tion shown in Graph 4 makes it pos­si­ble to clearly see the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the mur­der of jour­nal­ists and the il­le­gal drug traf­fick­ing busi­ness. Al­though some cases in these years could be re­lated to other causes, all the mur­ders of jour­nal­ists since the be­gin­ning of the phe­nom­e­non oc­curred, ex­cept for one, in bor­der de­part­ments. The mur­ders oc­curred in Amam­bay, Con­cep­ción, Itapúa, Canindeyú, Mi­siones, Alto Paraná, places that were al­ready pointed out by the IACHR as “si­lenced zones”, places “ex­tremely dan­ger­ous” for jour­nal­ists. places “ex­tremely dan­ger­ous” for the ex­er­cise of in­for­ma­tive work. Re­gard­ing the only case that did not hap­pen in a bor­der de­part­ment, the ex­cep­tion is not such, since it hap­pened in the de­part­ment of San Pe­dro, ad­ja­cent, in turn, to the de­part­ments with the high­est drug traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­ity in the coun­try, such as Amam­bay, Con­cep­ción and Canindeyú, all bor­der­ing Brazil.

Mur­der of jour­nal­ists by de­part­ment 1991-2022. In per­cent­ages

Source: Own with data from pub­li­ca­tions

Graph 5 shows the fol­low­ing cu­rios­ity. Two of the mur­ders of Paraguayan jour­nal­ists or of jour­nal­ists work­ing in Paraguayan me­dia (this is what is usu­ally taken as a pa­ra­me­ter to quan­tify the phe­nom­e­non) oc­curred in Brazil­ian ter­ri­tory. These cities are Ponta Porã and Coro­nel Sa­pu­caia, bor­der cities lo­cated in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

Mur­der of jour­nal­ists ac­cord­ing to coun­try of oc­cur­rence 1991-2022

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion with data from jour­nal­is­tic sources

On the other hand, Graph 6 shows that, of the 19 vic­tims, 16 are Paraguayan na­tion­als and 2 are Brazil­ian (al­though both have Paraguayan an­ces­tors). These are the jour­nal­ist Leo Ve­ras, who had a Paraguayan mother, and the com­mu­ni­ca­tor Samuel Román, of Paraguayan par­ents. There was also a vic­tim of Chilean na­tion­al­ity, Al­berto Tito Palma.

Fig­ure 6. Jour­nal­ists killed by na­tion­al­ity 1991-2022

Source: Own with data from pub­li­ca­tions

In Paraguay, the pat­terns of mur­ders of jour­nal­ists in Latin Amer­ica are re­peated, with vic­tims who do not come from large ur­ban cen­ters, work for sev­eral small, lo­cal or com­mu­nity me­dia, and in pre­car­i­ous em­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tions. Nor is there a sin­gle case of a sin­gle com­mu­ni­ca­tor who has been a vic­tim while cov­er­ing risky as­sign­ments. All of them were de­lib­er­ate mur­ders, where they were the tar­get of their vic­tim­iz­ers.

When Santiago Leguizamón was murdered in 1991 in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, it was not only the “inauguration” of the assassination linked to the actions of criminal groups in Paraguay, but also the ultra-violent silencing of journalists through this sinister tool. From that moment until today, almost twenty journalists have been murdered.

A dis­turb­ing and shock­ing fact is also that, in the cases of the mur­dered com­mu­ni­ca­tors Yamila Can­tero and Ángela Acosta, they were at­tacked by po­lice of­fi­cers. These events were never clar­i­fied and the of­fi­cial ver­sion la­beled them “crimes of pas­sion”. In the first case, the mur­der would have taken place in a po­lice sta­tion and then the per­pe­tra­tor would have com­mit­ted sui­cide, al­though no other po­lice­man pre­sent in the po­lice sta­tion on that oc­ca­sion heard any gun­shots. In the sec­ond case, sus­pi­cions were di­rected to­wards a uni­formed of­fi­cer, Agustín Al­fonso Verón, her al­leged boyfriend, who had been seen with her be­fore she was found shot on a coun­try road 180 km from En­car­nación. Even more dis­turb­ing is that the po­lice­man Verón was later linked to the mur­der of an­other jour­nal­ist, Al­berto Tito Palma, also in Mayor Otaño, Itapúa. In other words, in a very short pe­riod two jour­nal­ists were mur­dered in the same area (where homi­cides rarely oc­cur) and the main sus­pect was the same po­lice of­fi­cer. Thus, the hy­poth­e­sis of an al­leged “crime of pas­sion” only seemed to be a smoke­screen for an event that se­ri­ously com­pro­mised the Paraguayan State.

With­out ex­haust­ing this es­sen­tially quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis, most of these cases have re­mained so far with vary­ing de­grees of im­punity. Some were never cleared up, oth­ers were cleared up but not pun­ished, oth­ers were par­tially pun­ished (the ma­te­r­ial per­pe­tra­tors were con­victed, but not the mas­ter­minds) and none had a con­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion to pun­ish the ma­te­r­ial and in­tel­lec­tual au­thors. One last is­sue is co­in­ci­den­tally linked to the is­sue of pun­ish­ment for these crimes.

Dur­ing this time, two jour­nal­ist broth­ers were mur­dered (Sal­vador and Pablo Med­ina), be­ing the only cases solved in a more or less sat­is­fac­tory way: 2 out of 19, 10.5% of the to­tal, be­low the world av­er­age of cases of jour­nal­ists’ mur­ders solved, which in 2020 was 13% ac­cord­ing to the United Na­tions. In short, Paraguay nei­ther pro­tects jour­nal­ists nor pun­ishes their ex­e­cu­tion­ers.

*Lawyer, teacher, and in­de­pen­dent re­searcher. For­mer Di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­tory of Se­cu­rity and Cit­i­zen Co­ex­is­tence of the Min­istry of the In­te­rior.

Cover im­age: NEA HOY