At Last, the Pen Outweighs the Sword : Guatemala: The press stood its ground against Serrano and censorship, a good sign for Latin American democracy.

With the restoration of democracy in Guatemala, the prestige of the nation’s news media has soared in the wake of the strong stand most of them took against government attempts to impose censorship and suspend other civil liberties.

Nothing dramatized the media’s victory as well as the venomous, very Guatemalan curse hurled at journalists by the fallen president on his way into exile. “Sons of the great whore!” shouted Jorge Serrano as troops escorted him from the presidential palace.

“He meant it as an insult but we took it as a compliment,” said Mario Antonio Sandoval, who had resigned as editor of Prensa Libre, the nation’s largest newspaper, rather than accept censorship.

Sandoval, who is also a member of the Prensa Libre board and son of one of the conservative paper’s founders, had been one of Serrano’s severest critics in questioning the recent meteoric rise in his financial fortunes. On one occasion, according to Sandoval and two other prominent citizens who were present, the president told him that he had considered having him killed.

The media’s resistance began almost as soon as Serrano suspended the nation’s constitution.

Most newspaper and magazine editors refused to allow government censors into their newsrooms. Some papers, risking substantial financial losses, refused to publish rather than accept the restrictions. In some instances, uncensored issues were smuggled out under the noses of police guarding newspaper offices. The clandestine papers were then photocopied and circulated by hand and fax.

The liberal daily La Hora summoned foreign and local journalists to its offices as editions were bundled out the door, figuring correctly that security forces stationed outside would not interfere in the presence of such witnesses.

Rather than publish censored material, some newspapers appeared with blank pages. The morning daily Siglo Veintiuno (21st Century) blackened its front page and changed its masthead to Siglo Catorce (14th Century) to signal what its editors said was a “return to the Dark Ages.”

Angry journalists at Prensa Libre took to crossing out Libre (free) from the paper’s name on their I.D. badges to protest the board of directors’ decision to compromise with Serrano and accept self-censorship.

In defying the government, the media had a powerful and surprisingly open ally: the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. In the early stages of the crisis, two ranking staff members were dispatched to newspaper offices to offer support and encouragement. The embassy, immune from a government ban on public meetings, hosted a press conference in which Guatemalan editors discussed the press restrictions with foreign and other local journalists.

What made the media’s defiant role in the crisis significant is that journalism in Guatemala has been a particularly dangerous and sometimes fatal undertaking for most of the country’s long-running civil war. At least 30 Guatemalan journalists have been killed by elements on the right and the left. Bombs explode at newspaper and newsmagazine offices from time to time--as they did during the recent crisis.

Serrano was the third Latin American president, after Brazil’s Fernando Collor de Melo and Venezuela’s Carlos Andres Perez, to be removed from office following public and press outcries against government corruption at the highest levels. The new watchdog role is in marked contrast to the years when the press turned a blind eye to official thievery.

In Central America, the media are making progress in getting their own house in order after decades of government bribery. Their continued exposure of government corruption may turn out to be one of the more useful roles the press can play in the region’s fledgling democracies.