In the first six months of 2015 alone, there were 59 documented attacks against journalists in Guatemala, according to a report released last week by the Observatory for Journalists of the Center for Informative Reports about Guatemala (CERIGUA for its acronym in Spanish).
Rodrigo Neto, a journalist and radio host from Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, denounced injustices and held police accountable.
Former Colombian legislator and politician Ferney Tapasco has been sentenced to 36 years in prison for being the mastermind of the 2002 murder of La Patria deputy editor Orlando Sierra who was killed because of his work.
In Brazil, a country with a history of impunity concerning crimes against journalists, a man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for the 2013 murder of journalist Rodrigo Neto, reporter for newspaper Vale do Aço, in Minas Gerais.
Radio journalist Bernardo Javier Cano Torres of Iguala has been released after being held by kidnappers for 20 days, according to local media reports.
Police found the tortured body of Djalma Santos da Conceição, a 53-year-old journalist for community radio station RCA FM in the state of Bahia, on May 23, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Authorities in Paraguay have sent Brazil a formal request for the extradition of the man accused of being the mastermind behind the murder of journalist Pablo Medina on Oct.16, 2014.
In Brazil and Mexico, ranked seventh and eleventh by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the countries with the highest levels of impunity in the murder of journalists, two advocacy groups are mapping these attacks in an effort to increase their security.
Despite the comments of a senior Peruvian police official who said the killing of 22-year-old Lima reporter Fernando Raymondi was not motivated by his coverage of organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption, local journalists and international press freedom advocates continue to call for a thorough investigation of the shooting.
Impunity in the murder of journalists is not new in Latin America. In the last decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported 72 instances of journalists killed for their work. About 78 percent of these cases faced complete or partial impunity. But in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, levels of impunity have surpassed those of any other Latin American country, according to CPJ’s 2014 Global Impunity Index.