Angel Páez, this year’s winner of the Samuel Chavkin Prize for Integrity in Latin American Journalism, is no stranger to threats. Over the past year and a half he has been the victim of a systematic government campaign to intimidate him, and in the process, to silence Peru’s independent press.
On December 10, NACLA had the honor of presenting Páez, a 35-year-old journalist for Peru’s principal opposition newspaper, La República, with the annual award in memory of the writer and investigative journalist, Samuel Chavkin. The prize, established by Sam Chavkin’s family, is meant to encourage Latin American print journalists to expose injustice and oppression, and to document the struggles for social justice and democracy in Latin America.
Sam Chavkin was an investigative reporter who worked in Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s for the Overseas News Agency, the UN radio news division, and a variety of newspapers and magazines. He lost those positions in the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy deprived him of his passport, but he stayed in touch with the region and, in 1982, wrote the classic Storm Over Chile—among the most gripping and complete accounts of the 1973 military coup in Chile and its immediate aftermath.
Páez, in his courageous dedication to investigative reporting, embodies the work of Sam Chavkin. As the founder and head of the Investigations Unit at La República, Páez and his team of reporters have broken numerous stories exposing government corruption and other official misdeeds in his native Peru. His solid investigative reporting has provided readers with reliable information about the activities of the Maoist guerrilla movement, Shining Path, as well as human rights abuses committed by the Peruvian armed forces.
In recent years, like many Latin American journalists, he has faced harassment by government authorities who disapprove of his investigative work. He has received death threats and has been the victim of campaigns to discredit his reporting, including attacks by local tabloids accusing him of being linked to the Shining Path and of being a "traitor"—a campaign widely assumed to be linked to Peruvian intelligence services. The attacks are believed to be in retaliation for a series of investigative reports by Páez and his team exposing government corruption and human rights abuses within the Peruvian armed forces.
In 1996, the Investigations Unit broke a story about the arrest and torture of one and the murder of another female agent of the Peruvian National Intelligence Service (SIN), presumably by SIN operatives. The two agents had been accused by their superiors of leaking classified information to reporters from La República, including Páez, about the SIN’s involvement in human rights abuses, the wiretapping of opposition leaders and an intimidation campaign against independent journalists. Páez also exposed a series of corrupt arms deals by the Peruvian armed forces over the past two years. He has additionally been targeted because of his regular reporting for the Argentine daily, Clarín, which has brought the misdeeds of the Peruvian government to the eyes of a broader international community. The tabloid campaign against Páez continues in an apparent plan to silence him through charges of treason, a crime which is punishable by life imprisonment in Peru.
Being a journalist in Latin America today is a hazardous occupation. In the quasi-democracies that hold sway in the region, freedom of the press is respected on paper but often not in practice, as Páez noted when he accepted the Chavkin Prize. "President Fujimori is right when he affirms that freedom of the press in Peru is respected," he said, "but what he does not say is that those who exercise the right to free speech, or who dare to criticize the government, must be prepared to face the consequences. The government has revealed an incredible variety of reprisals to silence the independent press, demonstrating that dictatorships also know how to modernize."
The repertoire of reprisals ranges from assaults by supposed common criminals, to defamation campaigns and spurious libel suits. In countries in which democratic institutions have been compromised, the independent press—along with journalists like Páez who make that press come alive—is constantly under attack. But, notes Páez, "we want to be appreciated more for the result of our investigative reporting than for the number of threats we receive."
In "democracies" built on amnesia, lies and impunity, the truth is not always self-evident, and there are myriad interests trying to keep it obscured. Despite the risks involved, Latin America’s journalists from Mexico to Argentina have been instrumental in uncovering the truth. In countries like Peru, where the political opposition has been intimidated, bought or languishes in disarray, only the independent press is left to critique and counter the government’s hegemonic discourse. And journalists like Angel Páez are on the front line.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jo-Marie Burt is the co-editor of NACLA Report on the Americas.
