Journalist Carlos Walker was beaten and shot in the legs on Friday, July 29, in Mar del Plata, in eastern Argentina, while he was photographing posters with political propaganda, reported TN.
Dominican reporter José Agustín Silvestre for Cana TV was kidnapped and killed Tuesday, Aug. 2, in the city of La Romana, Dominican Republic, local press reported. His body was found near a pond with two gunshot wounds, according to El Día.
Hardly seven months have gone by and 2011 is already the most "tragic year in the last two decades for the Latin American press."
A man suspected of killing political journalist Auro Ida was arrested by the police July 25 in the neighborhood of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso where the crime occurred, G1 reports. Soon after, the 19-year-old man was released by the police when the victim’s girlfriend – the principal witness to the crime – failed to recognize him, Terra explains. The police say he is still under investigation.
Journalist Yolanda Orda, who had been missing for 48 hours, was found dead in Veracruz, Mexico, July 26, the Associated Press reports. Ordaz, who covered police issues for Notiver – one of the most important dailies in the region – is the second journalist from the paper to be killed in the last five weeks and the seventh Mexican journalist killed in 2011.
A bill in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies would require media companies to provide life and disability insurance for journalists working in dangerous areas, Agência Câmara reports.
Political journalist Auro Ida, 53, was shot to death the morning of July 22 in front of his girlfriend’s house in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, G1 reports.
In front of a police station in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, two Brazilian journalists were attacked while attempting to interview a doctor under investigation for the death of a university student, Diário Web reports.
On July 14, journalist Fábio Roberto was attacked as he left the offices of Radio Bahiana in Ilhéus, Bahia, where he hosts an opinion show on which he often airs corruption allegations, Vi o Mundo reports.
The director of the Honduran station Radio Joconguera, Nery Orellana, was shot to death Thursday, July 14, on a road in the Honduran town of Candelaria, on the border with El Salvador, reported La Prensa. Orellana, 26 years old, is the fourth journalist killed in Honduras this year, after the killings of journalists Adán Benítez, Francisco Medina Polanco, and Luis Mendoza, owner of television station Canal 24.
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.
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.