By Dean Graber
On a week of nonstop aggressions and attacks against journalists in Latin America, this news post from journalist Martin Angel Tax alerts us to the shooting Thursday evening of Luis Felipe Valenzuela, director of the Emisoras Unidas radio network.
Valenzuela is recovering Friday in a Guatemala City hospital from a bullet wound to the head, that according to doctors, was millimeters away from being fatal. His wife tells radio Emisoras Unidas that Valenzuela responded well to the surgery and was trying to comfort his family. He was shot in a Guatemala City street while on the way to a mass.
Investigators are considering that the attack was motivated by either armed assault, or an attempt on his life for his journalistic work, Prensa Libre reports.
See stories by Prensa Libre, Siglo XXI, elPeriódico, the Associated Press, and others.
Initial news of the shooting brought family, friends, colleagues, media executives to the hospital. Also present were the vice president of Guatemala, president of the National Congress, and foreign diplomats including the ambassadors of Mexico and the United States.
Thousands of listeners of one of Valenzuela's news programs sent text messages to the network, demanding justice in the shooting, Prensa Libre says.
"We have to raise a voice of alarm in society, even though it seems that we are accustomed to violence," says Gonzalo Marroquín, editor of Prensa Libre and vice president of the Inter American Press Association. "The press must close ranks to demand an investigation, and that this act doesn't go unpunished."
“Society is demanding an investigation and the clarification that the case merits and that the results are known soon," says Gonzalo Marroquin, vice president of the Inter American Press Association and editor of Prensa Libre.
Hear radio interviews with:
Claudia Taracena, Valenzuela’s wife
Dr. Domingo Fuentes, director of Hospital de las Américas
Carlos Castresana, chief of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
