On May 15, the Guatemalan newspaper «elPeriódico» closed operations after «287 days of resistance» to persecution and harassment by government authorities with the aim of financially drowning «elPeriódico», explained the outlet in a statement published days prior to closing.

Its director, journalist José Rubén Zamora, has been in jail since July 29, 2022, on charges of money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling. According to a report in the Spanish newspaper El País , “the case is based on a complaint made by former banker Ronald Giovanni García Navarijo, who accuses Zamora of blackmail and the alleged attempt to force him to launder 300,000 quetzales, about $38,000.” However, the journalist said that the money was obtained legally from «the sale of a painting to finance elPeriódico.»

The pressure against the media came from the publication of more than 200 investigations that revealed cases of corruption carried out by officials of the government of President Alejandro Giammattei, such as, to cite a couple of examples, the irregular purchase of vaccines against Covid19 or onerous mining concessions to Russian companies.

Since its founding in 1996, “elPeriodico” has had a clear investigative and cultural profile, something that Zamora recalled from his prison, this May 15, in the last editorial he published in his own medium:

“ Bartolina # 2, isolated section, Mariscal Zavala prison.

Thirty years of tireless fight against corruption, impunity and drug trafficking, against abuse of power, State terrorism, marginalization and misery, in favor of freedom, tolerance and the indispensable accountability, political pluralism, the quality of public spending, public investment in strategic infrastructure, the also essential fiscal balance, a struggle that by the way has taken place in the midst of marginality and loneliness, in a context of polarization and political regression towards tyrannical fascism, anachronistic and multipartisan, they have led us, exhausted and undercapitalized, some to jail and others to exile, through a blind alley: the inevitable closure of elPeriódico«.

Central America is facing a true authoritarian crisis that is increasingly expressed in intolerant state policies against critical and investigative journalism. Nicaragua represents the most extreme case in the region, where there are no independent media outlets and all journalists are in exile. Meanwhile, the government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador maintains a confrontational discourse with the press, especially against the digital media outlet El Faro, which was forced to move its administrative headquarters to Costa Rica to avoid future reprisals from the government. There are many opponents in Guatemala who fear that the country will become a «Nicaragua 2.0.»