Esneider Mayorga Corrales. the former mayor of Curillo, in southern Colombia, received 40 years in prison for ordering the killing of journalist and community leader Hernando Salas Rojas last year, reported the news agency EFE. The hit-man who committed the murder, Elber Parra Cuéllar, was sentenced to 42 years.
Katherine Izaguirre, a journalist for the Honduran station Globo TV, said several armed individuals kidnapped her for two hours, threatened her, and then stole her camera, El Tiempo reports.
On Oct. 18, journalist Francisco Gomes de Medeiros was killed in front of his home in the city of Caicó in Rio Grande do Norte state, O Globo’s Repórter de Crime blog reports. F. Gomes, as he was known, worked in radio in the city, was an active blogger, and collaborated with various media outlets in the state. He is the second Brazilian journalist killed in three days.
Renowned Dominican journalist Luis Eduardo Lora has reported receiving warnings from the lawyers of two convicted drug traffickers, telling him to retract his writings about them, Diario Libre reports.
Journalist Wanderlei dos Reis was shot by three men Saturday night, Oct. 16, inside his home in Ibitinga, São Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reports. He underwent surgery for a serious leg wound and died Sunday morning.
During President Felipe Calderón’s trip to the violent border city across from El Paso, Texas, a group of journalists from Ciudad Juárez called on the president to solve the killings of their colleagues, EFE and the International Press Institute report.
Through its You Tube channel, the Inter American Press Association has launched a series of videos highlighting its international campaign to counter violence against the press in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, and Colombia.
One month after the killing of journalist and social activist Adams Ledesma, director of a TV channel in a Buenos Aires shantytown, the crime remains unpunished, and neighbors and relatives have called a march to insist that the case is solved, Perfil newspaper reports.
With the violence unleashed by drug cartels profoundly impacting Mexico, both foreign and local journalists are trying to figure out how to cover a war of a different kind, according to a panel presented in front of more than 200 people at the University of Texas at Austin on Thursday, Oct. 7.
The National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) published a guide with measures for protecting journalists at risk and countering the violence against the press, reported EFE and La Jornada.
Peruvian writer and failed presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature for his "cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individuals' resistance, revolt and defeat," reported the Christian Science Monitor and Los Angeles Times.
Attackers armed with assault rifles opened fire on the headquarters of El Debate in the city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, at dawn Sunday, Oct. 3, La Jornada reports. No injuries occurred. The building’s façade was shot at least 17 times, Milenio adds.