For more than a quarter century, elPeriódico was Guatemala's boldest daily newspaper, proudly describing itself as “the most aggressive, least complacent, most critical and nonconformist counterweight to abuses of public power” among the country's news media. Then, citing persecution and political and economic pressures, in May 2023, the newspaper announced it was shutting its doors. Its founder, José Rubén Zamora, had been detained since the previous July on alleged money laundering charges in a process riddled with irregularities surrounding government prosecutors.
Although the closure of elPeriódico is final and Zamora remains under house arrest, the outlet’s contributions to history are once again accessible to anyone interested starting Jan. 31, when the Central American Independent Media Archive, or CAIMA, went live.
Organized by Ramón Zamora, José Rubén’s son, funded with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and with technical assistance from Bard College in New York, the archive provides free access to all print editions of the newspaper, as well as publications from eight other Guatemalan news outlets and from Confidencial in Nicaragua. In the future, the initiative's founder hopes to include even more media outlets from Central America.
For Ramón Zamora, who has been living in exile in the United States since 2023, the archive represents both a contribution to making his country’s recent history better known and a way to bring justice to his father and his decades-long work.
“This not only represents the country's history, but it also contains investigations and stories that are still current,” Ramón Zamora told the LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “We’ve always said that part of the goal of the persecution against my father was to wipe away any reporting that discomforted powerful people in the country.
elPeriódico’s website was available for only three days after the announcement of its closure, as there were no longer resources to keep the online servers running, Ramón Zamora said. However, the idea of an archive was not new. A 2013 digital attack that wiped out 10 years of archived material highlighted the need to organize the material in a secure location.
“When we suffered a digital attack on the website, we lost the entire archive that existed online from 2003 to 2013—an entire decade of journalism,” he said. “And from before 2003, we only had editions that were never digitized or converted to be available to the public.”
Edições impressas do jornal guatemalteco elPeriódico espalhadas sobre uma superfície, com manchetes sobre corrupção, narcotráfico e política. Em destaque, a edição especial de domingo com um tributo a jornalistas e figuras perseguidas ou exiladas (Foto: Reprodução elPeriódico)
In the final days before the newspaper closed, knowing he would likely have to leave the country, Ramón asked the publication's administrative team to help him digitize nearly 27 years of print editions, a mission they successfully accomplished. When he left the country, he carried with him copies of all the digitized editions stored on a hard drive.
Thanks to support from USAID and the work of Bard College archivists, who had previously worked on the Russian Independent Media Archive, the project of a public archive became feasible. Initially, only elPeriódico’s collection was to be made available. Since December, when the project was publicly announced, however, Ramón Zamora has reached agreements to archive eight other Guatemalan publications: Agencia Ocote, No-Ficción, Ojo con mi Pisto, Plaza Pública, Prensa Comunitaria, Ruda GT, Con Criterio and Crónica.
In total, more than 500,000 documents have been archived. Outside of Guatemala, the only participant, for now, is Confidencial from Nicaragua. The project aims to include other newspapers from Central America, as publications in countries like Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras face their own threats to press freedom.
“In our region, we’ve seen kidnappings, attacks and assassinations. And in our time, the tools to silence the media also extend to the digital world, with DDoS attacks or fake pages,” Ramón Zamora said. “Having backup copies strengthens the media. It increases our resilience, and in moments of attack that aim to silence investigations, it allows us to recover more quickly.”
One challenge in attracting more publications to the initiative involves copyright. Many outlets offer access to their archives as part of subscriber benefits, Ramón Zamora explained. This means not all archived materials will be easily accessible to the general public online, he added.
“So we’re saying, well, we’ll make the copy, but the content won’t be accessible to the average user of the archive because that’s part of the outlet’s business or sustainability model,” Ramón Zamora said. “The idea is that we won’t own the content. We just want to protect it.”
Former elPeriódico staffers explain the importance of keeping the reports published in the newspaper accessible. For Lucy Chai, who worked at elPeriódico from December 2002 to December 2022, starting as a political reporter and eventually becoming deputy editor—and who now works at Prensa Comunitaria—many of the newspaper's reports remain relevant.
“There are investigations that deal with structures that still exist in Guatemala, such as judges, deputies, businesspeople and politicians,” Chai told LJR. “There are many investigations about corruption that only elPeriódico worked on, especially concerning corruption at the highest levels.”
Alexander Valdéz, who primarily covered the judiciary while at elPeriódico, says one of the archive's key contributions is showing corruption cases not only in Guatemala’s most recent governments but also in previous administrations.
Many of the reports published in the newspaper led to legal proceedings and accountability. However, Valdéz said, there were also cases where impunity prevailed.
“There are still many cases that haven’t been processed because of corruption in the justice sector,” Valdéz told LJR. “That’s why it’s important for this work to remain accessible in a space where the public can read it and demand that authorities investigate pending cases.”
Meanwhile, Ramón Zamora sees the archive as a deeply personal project. As his family faces imprisonment and exile, the archive, filled with reports available to the public, represents a unique form of justice.
“For me, it’s important to be able to say: this happened,” he said. “It’s very personal for me that they managed to shut down elPeriódico, but it’s also a personal victory to say: they tried to silence us, but here we are. We will continue to tell the truth, and no one can take away what we’ve already done.”
