So far in 2011, there have been more attacks on journalists in Guatemala than in 2010, according the annual report from the Center of Informative Reports for Guatemala (CERIGUA).
The former mayor of Copán Ruinas, a Honduran city on the border with Guatemala, received death threats from drug traffickers who believe he acted as a source for the digital newspaper El Faro in El Salvador, El Faro reported.
Plaza Pública, a Guatemalan online newspaper, published U.S. State Department cables obtained from Wikileaks regarding presidential candidate Otto Pérez Molina.
In Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez, south of Guatemala City, two journalists blamed the local mayor for threatening and intimidating them, and being physically and verbally aggressive.
A new grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will help two Latin American journalists extend their Knight Latin American Nieman Fellowships so they can explore projects that may create new ways to keep citizens informed while also enhancing a free press.
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.
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.
Journalist Vasni Vásquez, who was held for two months for alleged involvement in a kidnapping, denounced the authorities’ negligence and failure to thoroughly investigate the case, Cerigua reports.
The meeting began with a moment of silence for slain television journalist Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdamez. Nearly 80 journalists bowed their heads as they gathered for the “3rd International Meeting of Journalists from the Departments and the Capital of Guatemala.” Their mission: to bring journalists together for training and dialogue in hopes of improving coverage of the upcoming elections.
Journalist Eduardo Villatoro says he received telephoned death threats for his reports on mining and gas plants on the coasts of Guatemala, Cerigua reports via IFEX. Callers told the journalist he could be killed for being an enemy of progress and discouraging foreign investment.
Alleged members of Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s biggest criminal organizations, were arrested while posting a banner threatening the press in the western Guatemalan city of Quetzaltenango, Observador Global reports.
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has announced the 2012 class of Nieman Fellows, including Claudia Méndez Arriaza of Guatemala's El Periódico newspaper, and Carlos Eduardo Huertas of Colombia's Revista Semana, according to the Nieman Lab.