Hugo Olivera Cartas was killed Tuesday morning after being shot three times. The body was found in a pickup truck on a road between the cities of Tepalcatepec and Aguililla in the western state of Michoacán, reports the news agency Quadratín, where the journalist worked. (See this Associated Press article in English.)
Not only paramilitaries, but also government agents were involved in the 1999 killing of prominent journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón. El Heraldo reported that Colombian prosecutors ordered José Miguel Narváez, the ex-deputy director of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS, or Colombia's intelligence agency), be held for ordering Garzón's death.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) asked the Brazilian government and legislators to approve a proposed Constitutional amendment that would allow killings and attempted killings of journalists to be judged at the federal level. IAPA issued a declaration and sent to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Congress members a letter signed by newspaper readers from across the continent.
Radio sports reporter Clóvis Silva Aguiar, 48 years old, was murdered Thursday night, June 24, in the city of Imperatriz, in the western part of Maranhão in Brazil, reported the newspaper Jornal Pequeno. He was in the door of his mother's house when two men on a motorcycle drove by and shot at him three times, the newspaper said.
Two unidentified, armed assailants went to the home of journalist Juan Francisco Rodríguez Ríos and his wife María Elvira Hernández Galeana, where they ran an Internet cafe in Coyuca de Benítez, in the southern state of Guerrero, and shot them to death, reported El Universal.
One year after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from office, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to the International Press Institute. The article includes a timeline of the murders of Honduran journalists in 2010.
The Inter American Press Association is kicking off a workshop about how to diminish journalists' risks with the debut of a documentary commemorating the assassination of journalist Francisco Ortiz Franco in Tijuana, Mexico, on June 22, 2004, according to the newspaper El Universal.
TV Globo photographer Márcio Alexandre de Souza, 36 years old, was shot and killed Sunday morning, June 20, in São Cristóvão, in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro, reported the newspaper O Globo.
Luís Arturo Mondragón, news director for a local cable news channel, died after leaving work when two people shot him from the window of their vehicle in El Paraíso, east of the capital, El Heraldo reports.
Reporter Elisa Mejías and photojournalist Miguel Carrera, both of the newspaper La Prensa of Barquisimeto, died over the weekend when the car in which they were traveling overturned while they were being closely followed by another vehicle whose occupants presumably wanted to rob them, La Prensa and El Informador report. Two other journalists from the same newspaper were seriously wounded.