Pension

As elections in Guatemala loom, press freedom erodes across region


Lucía Pineda Ubau had been working around the clock, sleeping in her newsroom in Nicaragua and covering President Daniel Ortega’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests, when the police stormed in.

They cut the TV station’s news signal, bound her wrists and hauled her away. 

In a dark, fetid cell in Managua’s notorious prison known as El Chipote, where the country’s former dictator once tortured the Sandinista rebels, she waited for her next interrogation. 

“I clung to God, to prayer,” Pineda, 49, recently told USA TODAY. She was unsure of when she might be freed.

Her arrest had come more than a decade after Ortega, a former Sandinista rebel who led Nicaragua during its fight with U.S.-backed Contras in the 1980s, returned to the presidency and grew increasingly autocratic. 

After massive demonstrations erupted in 2018, police and paramilitaries crushed both the protesters and the independent journalists who told the story, driving some like Pineda to prison, and forcing more than 180 journalists into exile. 

Lucía Pineda Ubau, director the news outlet 100% Noticias, works at her home in Costa Rica. Pineda was forced to flee Nicaragua after being jailed in a 2018 government crackdown on opposition and independent media. Her outlet now covers Nicaragua from abroad.

Among them were Carlos Chamorro, a prominent editor whose offices raided twice before he fled; Néstor Arce Aburto, who livestreamed protests before making a narrow escape; and Octavio Enríquez, whose family faced threats as he reported on corruption.

Today, all of them cover their home country from outside Nicaragua, often from across the border in Costa Rica. Since then, they’ve watched media repression increase in several Central American nations, which experts say reflects the region’s continuing slide toward authoritarianism.



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