The slaying of Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral after a June 9 concert in Guatemala put the country in the international spotlight. Authorities have reported increasing levels of violence in Guatemala, where the murder rate is more than double that in Mexico, where fights between rival drug trafficking gangs and security forces have left more than 35,000 dead since 2006.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) celebrated the arrest of five suspects accused of killing Brazilian journalist Edinaldo Filgueira, blogger and director of the local chapter of the Workers Party in the state of Rio Grande do Norte.
Brazilian journalist Mário Randolfo Marques Lopes was shot but not killed Wednesday, July 6, at his house in the city of Vassouras, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, according to the newspaper Diário do Vale.
After a six-week investigation, Venezuelan police have concluded that journalist Wilfred Ojeda was killed in revenge over a debt and had nothing to do with his journalistic work, reported ACN.
In a joint operation, federal and civil police from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte arrested on July 2 and 3 five suspects accused of killing community journalist Ednaldo Filgueira, who also blogged and was president of the local chapter of the Workers Party, reported the news site No Minuto.
Mexican journalist Ángel Castillo Corona, columnist for the digital newspaper Portal, was killed along with his teen-age son, early Sunday morning, July 3, when they were assaulted while driving in the city of Tianguistenco in Mexico State, Portal reported.
After the wave of journalist killings in Honduras in 2010 that prompted President Porfirio Lobo to ask the U.S. FBI for help, so far in 2011 three journalists have been killed. Adán Benítez, veteran host and journalist who worked for more than 16 years in radio and television, was shot to death on his way home in the city of La Ceiba on Monday, July 4, reported La Prensa Gráfica.
Guatemalan journalist Jorge Arquímides Manchamé Palma was killed in the city of Esquipulas, in the southeastern Guatemalan department of Chiquimula, on Sunday, July 3, reported the newspaper Prensa Libre.
Independent journalist Luis Eduardo Gómez, a witness for prosecutors' investigation into links between politicians and paramilitaries, was killed by two gunmen who shot him from a motorcycle last week in Arboletes, Antioquia, in northwest Colombia, BBC reports.
The government of the Mexican state of Veracruz is offering a reward of more than a quarter-million dollars for information about the killing of a journalist, reported El Universal.
A firebomb was thrown at a truck for the television program Juez Justo TV, which is hosted by ex-police colonel Benedicto Jiménez, reported Panamericana Televisión. The attack occurred in the Peruvian capital of Lima in the wee morning hours of Wednesday, June 29.
The Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA in Spanish) denounced a series of attacks and anonymous threats against a journalist in southern Argentina, reported Diario Uno. Mario Sánchez, radio reporter and a board member for the press union in Neuquén in the Patagonia region of Argentina, recently was robbed and his house set on fire, explained El Diario de la Roja. Then, a few days later, the reporter received intimidating phone calls and a death threat, the newspaper added.