Censorship and Fear

It was over in a matter of minutes. The police van braked to a stop, 40 civil guards in tan shirts and steel helmets jumped out and, while most of Lima slept through a foggy March dawn, Peru's leftist military junta took over two opposition newspapers, the morning Expreso and evening Extra. The remaining opposition Lima daily--La Tribuna--was then reduced to a mimeograph edition when the regime embargoed its presses.

Military repression is no novelty in South America. But in Peru, where press freedoms have gone relatively unchallenged for nearly 50 years, the latest muzzling came as a surprise. Following the same course that Dictator Juan Peron took in seizing Argentina's La Prensa in 1951, the junta declared that the two expropriated newspapers would be turned over to a staffers' union and cooperative. As La Prensa learned nearly two decades earlier, the move was not so liberal as it might have seemed. Not only must the union rely on junta funding, but the reporters and editors also face "expropriation" if they get out of line. Last week a La Tribuna editor and an editor of Norte were sentenced to six months in prison for violating Peru's euphemistically named "Press Freedom Law."

Shock Waves. Censorship in all its forms is spreading in South America. In Bolivia last month, the leftist military regime decreed that "press workers'' would henceforth "enjoy the Sunday rest." In fact, the Sunday work suspension snuffed out the Monday morning editions of all four major papers that are hostile to the government. In addition, the government's insistence that newspapers provide space on the editorial page for reporters to "freely express their ideas under their signatures" was actually an attempt to curb antigovernment editorials.

Bolivian journalists have more to fear than tricky decrees. Alfredo Alexander, publisher of La Paz's morning Hoy and evening Ultima Hora, was with his wife at his elegant estate when a man with a visor cap and large dark glasses delivered a shoe-box-size package. It contained a bomb, and minutes later the explosion killed the couple, sending shock waves through city rooms across the continent.

Simpler Still. New York Governor Rockefeller's visit to South America last June--and the disorders that accompanied it--gave some governments the excuse they were looking for to crack down on the press. Shortly before the Governor's arrival, Brazil issued "recommendations" to the press that banned all stories on any visit-connected disorders in any Latin American country.

In January, Brazilian right-wing leaders decreed a new censorship law aimed mainly at pornography and obscenity, under which 5,000 copies of the February Playboy were impounded for three weeks before being released for sale in opaque plastic wrappers. Political censorship is somewhat more subtle. By telephone or personal visits, Brazilian army officers tell publishers and broadcast executives which subjects are taboo. The latest taboo is any mention of the torture methods that are blatantly used by police and military against political prisoners. In Paraguay, Panama, Haiti and Cuba, the rules are simpler still. No opposition newspaper is allowed, and all papers are subject to seizure.

Greatest Weakness. Though a mild muzzling of the press had characterized the army officers who seized power in Argentina in 1966, the reins were tightened last June when the regime declared a "state of siege." Two magazines that had previously been protected by the Supreme Court were forced to shut down, causing Argentina's La Prensa to editorialize: "There is no freedom of the press in the country today."

Tom Harris, president of the Committee on Freedom of the Press of the Inter-American Press Assn., said in Puerto Rico last week that "true freedom of the press exists only in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Guyana." Where it does not exist, the pattern of repression is remarkably consistent. The harsher the government, the more vulnerable it becomes to its greatest weakness: lack of popular support. When the people are restive, the thing that dictatorships fear most is a vigorous press that may stir them up.

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