Canelones, Uruguay, December 1
At the Politeama Theater in this city, which turned a century ago last March, a prominent leftist politician inaugurates the Latin American Investigative Journalism Conference (COLPIN 2021). It is Yamandú Orsi, today Mayor of the department, in 2022 perhaps a candidate of the Broad Front in the presidential elections. The Canelones government offered logistical facilities as a sponsor of the largest annual meeting of investigative journalists. This hospitality may come as a surprise when several of those summoned suffer exile or judicial persecution due to leftist regimes. In an armchair is the Cuban independent artist Michel Matos, a member of the San Isidro Movement. The program highlights exhibitions by harassed journalists from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Mexico. The main speaker tonight is precisely Carlos Fernando Chamorro, a political exile, director of Confidential, the research program banned by the Nicaraguan government.
A Peruvian cannot help but reflect that President Pedro Castillo would not promote such a meeting. Neither do the leaders of the Peruvian left who support him, indifferent to the repression against their peoples in the governments of their neighbors. The repression includes the press that criticizes them, because it is considered part of the enemy camp. But Orsi belongs to a left democratic. His opening night speech ended with this appeal:
─ Don’t loosen up!
The best
At COLPIN 2021, investigations into crimes, theft, sexual abuse, espionage and almost everything that is wrong in Latin America were described. The Latin American award for the specialty was won by James Alberti, from TV Globo, with an investigation into innocent prisoners for having been misidentified in a catalog of suspects of the Brazilian police. They are hundreds and 83% black. The work required an enormous survey of data and produced legislative modifications. A jury of eminent editors debated hard to decide whether this search had more merits than the one that ultimately came in second, for the extraordinary Colombian researcher Ricardo Calderón. After leaving the magazine Week now shine on Snail News. He demonstrated the falsity of the official version of the death of 24 prisoners in the La Modelo prison in Bogotá, after analyzing 270 unpublished videos and interviewing dozens of inmates, relatives and prison guards. What there were were murders, torture, atrocious humiliation.
YOU CAN SEE: IPYS rejects request for seizure of assets presented by César Acuña against Christopher Acosta
At the conference Calderón electrified the audience with another great investigation, also to Snail News. He broadcast a series of audios of the assassins of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise. They demonstrated the involvement in the assassination of the current Prime Minister, Claude Joseph. It was a world first. The art of the work consisted of managing sources to obtain the hail of compromising audios. With this material, Calderón completely reconstructed the crime and the subsequent 36 hours, managing to establish what really happened.
A celebration
On the other hand, there were tables for reflection, all made up of great personalities of the trade. In one Cristian Alarcón presented thirteen essays from the book Imperfect future. Where is journalism going? In another session, essential issues on the relationship between the press and governments were addressed. Fernando Ruiz, president of the Argentine Journalism Forum, stated that journalists should be more aware of the power they have and divided this force into several pieces. For example, the ability to influence public policy. Another is to produce communities of victims: those directly affected by the events denounced. In this panel it was inevitable to address what is happening in Brazil and Mexico, whose presidents, of different ideological signs, are enemies of the independent press.
Marcelo Beraba, former Ombudsman of Folha de Sao Paulo, said that despite the calamities brought by the government of Jair Bolsonaro, a celebration could be held. The press had been able to demonstrate the corruption in his government. (Breno Pires, from Status, present at COLPIN, investigated how Bolsonaro used public funds to buy the Brazilian Congress). Better still, ”Beraba continued,“ the press had managed to defeat, through different associative mechanisms, the fake news promoted by the presidency, especially regarding the pandemic.
YOU CAN SEE: A member of La Resistencia harasses a Hildebrandt journalist in his thirteen
Raúl Olmos, a journalistic researcher for MCCI, a Mexican anti-corruption group, painted a different picture. Unlike Bolsonaro, whose acceptance dropped to 19%, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s is around 70%. There are disappointed versions of the quality of his government – that is not the issue here – but in something he was indisputably successful: he managed to silence a part of the traditional press, while he maintains his popularity at the point of daily press conferences and public appearances, what an eternal candidate. State advertising has been reduced to benefit those who will not criticize it: the powerful Televisa and Aztec TV, and the formerly untamed Working day, today a ruling party, perhaps the most painful disease that a media that once fought can contract.
Another celebration
AMLO instead, he criticizes the critical right-wing newspaper Reform (“A filthy pasquín”) and those who published signs of corruption in their environment: Carmen Aristegui and the dignified left-wing magazine Process (“The underworld of journalism”). Since they do not agree with him, they are enemies of the people. This trait allows us to return to Peru.
We already know that Pedro Castillo it would be equal to or worse than AMLO against critical journalism if it had more force. He has expressed similar concepts. But it was the non-official press, defective and at odds with each other, which exposed the incapacity and corruption in his government. It was not him Congress nor the Public Ministry. This is also cause for celebration in the current circumstances, as no one else was going to do it.
This is the last column signed by the author in this journal.
