Guatemala’s War on Journalists
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reveal revisits a story produced in collaboration with a Guatemalan journalist who is now in prison. José Rubén Zamora was jailed last summer after his newspaper, elPeriódico, published more than 100 stories about corruption within Guatemala’s government.
Corruption is a longstanding problem in Guatemala, and it’s intertwined with U.S. policy in Central America. At times, the U.S. has had a corrupting influence on Guatemalan politics; at others, it has supported transparency. This week’s show looks at the root causes of corruption and impunity in Guatemala and how they have prompted generations of Guatemalans to flee their country and migrate north.
Veteran radio journalist Maria Martin takes us to Huehuetenango, a province near Guatemala’s border with Mexico. For decades, residents have been migrating to the U.S. to help support families struggling with poverty. We then connect the migration outflow to U.S. policy during the Cold War and its support of brutal dictatorships in Guatemala that were plagued by corruption.
Then Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes introduces us to a crusading prosecutor named Iván Velásquez. In the early 2000s, Velásquez was tasked with running an international anti-corruption commission in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. Its mandate was to root out corruption and improve the lives of Guatemalans so they wouldn’t feel compelled to leave their homes. Velásquez had a reputation for jailing presidents and paramilitaries, but met his match when he went after Jimmy Morales, a television comedian who was elected president in 2015. Morales found an ally in then-U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration helped Morales dismantle CICIG.
With CICIG gone, journalists were left to expose government corruption – journalists like Zamora, who was arrested last summer on trumped-up charges. Diaz-Cortes speaks with Zamora’s son about his father’s arrest and the state of journalism in Guatemala.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in September 2020.
Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Al Etzin. |
| 0:10.0 | Today, we're bringing you an important update to a story about the legacy of US policy |
| 0:16.0 | and Latin America and how the politics of the Cold War connect to the immigration issue. |
| 0:22.3 | The story takes us to Guatemala and we first aired it in the fall of 2020. |
| 0:27.6 | We also created a written version in Spanish that was published in El Periodico, one of Guatemala's |
| 0:34.7 | most respected newspapers. |
| 0:37.4 | Our partner at the paper has spent much of the past year in prison. |
| 0:44.4 | The police of Guatemala took the winter of July 29th, the journalist José Rubén Zamora, |
| 0:49.8 | José Rubén Zamora, founded the paper and was its editor. |
| 0:54.7 | El Periodico is known for investigating government corruption and for years. |
| 1:00.2 | Zamora had endured harassment and even kidnapping because of the papers reporting. |
| 1:06.2 | His arrest last July on charges of money laundering in blackmail has been widely condemned |
| 1:11.1 | as politically motivated. |
| 1:12.4 | The committee to protect journalists has called for Zamora's release and the case has |
| 1:20.0 | even caught the attention of the United Nations Secretary General. |
| 1:26.9 | All over the world, more and more journalists are coming under attack for their reporting. |
| 1:32.5 | More than 350 were imprisoned in 2022 and the trend continues. |
| 1:37.7 | Russian authorities have arrested an American journalist and charged him with espionage. |
| 1:42.8 | Evan Gerskovich of the Wall Street Journal was detained by intelligence. |
| 1:48.9 | We'll pick up the story of our partners imprisonment later in the hour. |
| 1:53.0 | But first, let's reconnect with our original story, which, like I said, relates to immigration |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.