A group of prominent journalists and writers headed by the Cervantes Award visited the journalist in the Mariscal Zavala prison in Guatemala City. The former director of THE PERIÓTICO It was locked by the international community and different humanitarian organizations consider political retaliation for their efforts to denounce acts of corruption and impunity that prevails in their country. The visit to the prison, located northwest of the Guatemalan capital, is not only a sample of solidarity, but a clear message to the judicial authorities of the Central American nation to release the journalist and stop persecution against reporters and critical voices. “I feel strong and happy,” Zamora said upon receiving the delegation. “I feel that if all this had not happened to me, so important people of the letters would not have visited a mason of the letters,” he joked, before reiterating his innocence. “I know I’m going out,” he said in his little cell.
Together with the Nicaraguan writer, the director of El País were in prison; the director for America of this newspaper, Jan Martínez Ahrens; Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui; Carlos Fernando Chamorro, editor of Nicaraguan magazine Confidential; Martin Baron, former executive director of The Washington Post; and Carolina Robino, director of BBC Mundo. The visit has been made within the framework of the Central America Festival, which Ramírez directs and is organized for the second time in Guatemala in his itinerant tour due to the political persecution of dissident voices of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua.
Zamora criticized during the meeting the democratic regression of his country and the “institutions without institutionality”, which play in favor of factual powers to persecute critics. “The strongest limitation we have in Guatemala is the political corporatism that directs the country,” he said pointing to the powerful political elite.
“For me Zamora has always represented the injustice and weight that a corrupt judicial system has to stop free information in Central America,” writer Sergio Ramírez told El País. “It seems to me that this circumstance, as he says, have been attenuated by the presence of a new democratic government in Guatemala, but does not have enough power to get it out of jail. Because the mechanisms through which he is prosecuted and maintained in a trial depends on the judiciary not on the Executive. This is a great contradiction, because it is supposed to Owners of the corruption circus here is that Arévalo transels the limits of the law to prosecute it too, ”he added.
Ramírez believes that this complex situation “reveals the maximum degree of injustice that can be reached against a journalist” and said acts such as the visit to the Zamora prison is a call for attention to the Guatemalan authorities. “We want to demonstrate that very conspicuous representatives of Latin American journalism are here to demonstrate their solidarity with him and claim his freedom. That is, these barriers of injustice are raised that José Rubén Zamora is capturing in this jail and that he can return to freedom, which is where he should be,” the writer demanded.
Zamora was animated, in a good mood, during the visit to the small cell where he is locked up, where he has a small bed, a shelf with some books and a bathroom where he can see when there is water, because he has 12 hours of rationing. A small refrigerator that the new administration has allowed him to put is the luxury of the cell. Despite the conditions of his imprisonment, he was enjoyable, eloquent and talked widely about the political situation of his country and the long history of morning, despot and servile politicians who have led the Central American nation. He was, above all, proud of his work as a journalist and the investigations that together with his team he could publish, who forced dismissals and judicial processes against more than one politician, presidents included, who increased the hatred of his enemies, much of the political class included, which he has called “a pot of cannibal crickets”.
“I saw the environment as a change agent, our goal was to change the rules of the game and we achieved some things, such as the resignation of the Court in full and constitutional reforms,” he explained. However, he feels that it was not enough, because the country has not been able to get rid of corruption. “We are in a democratic regression in which armed exits no longer fit; now we have to be more creative and look for another way to face power,” asked the journalist, who has defined the system of his country as “a dictatorship disguised.”
Dressed in a white shirt, blue jeans and black zapotes (“I put them off because you came,” he joked), the journalist remembered the torture to which he was subjected since the first days of his imprisonment, which included preventing him from sleeping during the nights, not allowing visits, leaving him without ordinary water, infecting his cell arms, ”he said), a confinement, in short, that has left physical sequelae, including damage to sight and mobility. He recalled that his conditions have improved since President Bernardo Arévalo took possession of the government. “It was overwhelming,” he acknowledged. Now the journalist can even shower normally. “When I throw the shampoo I feel a happiness, as if I was in a hotel in Cambodia,” Rio.
A court of the Central American country, accusation that the director of the newspaper THE PERIÓTICO constantly denied throughout the trial, which he denounced as a political persecution against him. The Prosecutor’s Office had asked for a 40 -year sentence. The process against Zamora has been as rocambolesco as Guatemalan justice is. Last October, after a long day in the courts, after 812 days imprisoned, but in March a judge in charge of his case fulfilled the order of a superior judicial court of withdrawing the house arrest, despite the fact that the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) had determined in a ruling issued in January that continued in his home. “I have been a victim of a systematic attack on my rights,” said Zamora.
Zamora at his home in Guatemala City on July 29, 2022 with a strong deployment from the authorities, with about twenty officers with balaclavas and armed with rifles that entered their home by walls and roof, in an operation that is seen as a message of intimidation against those who denounce the corruption that carks to the Central American country. The journalist never shut up and his investigations revealed dark frameworks for the benefit of powerful characters in the political and economic life of Guatemala, including the former president.
José Carlos Zamora, son of the journalist, has described the process against his father as a “revenge” of what he calls the “corrupt pact”, referring to a powerful network of political and economic forces that press to maintain impunity and corruption in the Central American country. That powerful framework controls the Prosecutor’s Office under the command of Consuelo Porras, who has imposed as the main opponent of the Arévalo government. “It is a punishment against my dad for doing journalism. People who are behind this persecution form a criminal cell that must be disjointed,” said José Carlos Zamora.
The visit to the jail by the journalists also reflects, while the prisons of the country are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior (Interior), which has allowed the entry into the prison where Zamora is, who had denounced torture, death threats, cruel and degrading treatment and humiliations during his detention. With the arrival of President Bernardo Arévalo to power, prison conditions improved, but the president cannot decide on his release. “Guatemala is the perfect maze, without exit,” Zamora analyzed his guests. “But I have faith in the people of Guatemala, at some point society must go to the attack, I am optimistic with that,” he said. “We have to recover democracy,” asked the reporter from his small Guatemalan cell.
