08 Jul 22 | Americas, News and features, Peru
Peruvian president Pedro Castillo’s first year in office has been interesting to say the least. Since his election on 28 July 2021, he has faced two impeachment requests for alleged corruption for peddling influence to favour contractors in public works and “permanent moral incapacity”; he has survived both.
Unlike most media-hungry politicians, Castillo has gone silent - he hasn’t spoken to the press for more than 100 days. The last time was in February 2022 when he said “this press is a joke”. This silence seems to have no end in sight.
Gabriela García, a Peruvian journalist based in Lima with independent journalism portal Epicentro.TV, says Castillo has slammed the door closed on journalists in the country.
“The last time I think he was able to speak to journalists was during his campaign. And then began a lot of corruption in his circle with his ministers. He knows there are reasons to investigate him, so he is silent because he is afraid,” says García.
According to Garcia, Castillo is not fulfilling promises he made during the presidential campaign – to work for the poorest, that he would respect the press and would strengthen women's rights. If anything, he is doing the exact opposite.
Like many around the world, Peruvians are facing a rising cost of living and many people are starving.
“I was not against him at the beginning of the campaign, I really thought it was an opportunity for the poorest. All decisions are made and rely on Lima, but we have another Peru that is forgotten. I am very disappointed with this”, says García, referring to the 195 provinces outside the capital.
Garcia’s disappointment is shared by fellow Peruvian journalist Luís Burranca.
“We are witnessing possibly the most corrupt government since Alberto Fujimori in the early 2000s,” says Burranca. “There are already four prime ministers who have held office in just a year and we have a former minister of transport and communications on the run from justice”. The former minister, Juan Silva, has been accused of irregular acts in public tenders for works and corruption and there is currently a 50,000 soles (£10,000) reward for information on his whereabouts.
The lack of communication with the president and the parliament itself makes the work of the press very difficult. Cameras are not accepted inside the Peruvian parliament, for example.
The relationship between press and presidents in Peruvian was previously stable, says Garcia. She has always worked closely with the government, while at the same time asking politicians difficult questions.
“Presidents might not like it, but they’d let us do our jobs,” she says. “Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala were able to understand that they were the presidents, so they couldn't insult anyone. They were more aware of their roles, about the presidential hierarchy.”
“Castillo doesn't understand the work of the press. He doesn’t know why an independent press is so important. He thinks we have to be nice and easy. He's lucky to be where he is, but he's not prepared at all,” she says.
The difficulties in reporting on Peru’s politics is not confined to government - there is a far-right group in Peru today that is a particular problem for journalists and anyone on the other side politically. La Resistencia was created in 2018 by people who identify themselves as Christians and “defenders of the homeland”. They consider themselves “albertists”, as they seek to follow in the footsteps of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru between 1990 and 2000 and who was convicted of crimes against humanity. La Resistencia’s ideology is based on authoritarianism, conservatism and opposition to communism and LGBT rights.
“They are untouchable and aggressive towards journalists,” says Garcia. “They are being investigated, but nothing has happened so far. We don't know who gives them money. They say they are independent, but we don't believe them. They are a problem for everyone.”
Despite the challenges, García believes that the independent press is growing stronger in the country.
“We are fighting for independence. We know it's not the same thing as traditional television with a lot more money. We're fighting with this [she shows her pen] and nothing else."
Against this backdrop, Garcia is “more afraid than ever for democracy” in Peru.
“It’s a broken country, with far-right and far-left ideas colliding all the time. We are closer to the edge than ever before,” she said.
Roberto Uebel, professor of international relations at Brazil’s Superior School of Propaganda and Marketing (ESPM) of Porto Alegre in Brazil, believes a free press is vital for democracy.
“In Latin America, there has always been distrust from governments regarding the work of the press. The idea of a persecution that does not exist, this is very particular to the Latin American political context, a relationship of distrust between political actors and the press”.
Yet many leaders in Latin America engage with media. Nicaragua and Venezuela’s leftist regimes have a relationship with the press, albeit a state press. Chile and Argentina’s presidents have an open relationship with journalists.
“In the case of Peru, it is a more left-wing regime and does not have such a positive relationship. A hundred days without talking to the press,” says Uebel. “This dichotomy is very dangerous, the left regime is more open, right regimes are more closed. It depends much more on the political figure in power than on the type of regime”.
Whether Castillo will complete his full term is open to question.
Since Ollanta Humala left office in July 2016, most of his successors have faced repeated impeachment attempts, setting an average for Peruvian presidents of just one and a half years in office, says Uebel. Martin Vizcarra, for example, ruled the country between March 2018 and November 2020, stepping down after an impeachment process for “moral incapacity” and accused of influence peddling and corruption during his term as regional governor of Moquegua.
“The idea of a constant impeachment has already been institutionalised in Peru,” says Uebel.
García says she doesn’t believe that Castillo will finish his full term.
“All the ministers being investigated for corruption are close to him. We have food shortages in this poor country that has faced two years of a pandemic. The government is weakened.”
Faced with growing disillusionment in his abilities and the ever-present threat of impeachment, Castillo may not be able to remain silent forever.
19 Nov 21 | Brazil, News and features
There is a highly symbolic scene in Marighella, a Brazilian film that has only reached movie theatres now, even though it has been ready for release since 2019. An American agent (Charles Paraventi) praises Police Chief Lúcio (Bruno Gagliasso) for the inventiveness with which the revolutionary group Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN) infiltrated radio stations, broadcasting a subversive message using only a tape recorder and circumventing the censorship. The sequence fulfils at least two functions: to reinforce the deep ties between the brutality of the Brazilian military dictatorship and North American imperialist interests; and reinforcing political and social resistance through creativity, a typically Brazilian trait often described as jeitinho or malandragem – a way of circumventing the bureaucratic norms.
I evoke this idea of trickery because it is at the centre of the imbroglio involving the release of Marighella, a political biopic of Carlos Marighella, a Brazilian Marxist-Leninist communist, politician and writer.
Marighella, born in 1911, was regularly in and out of jail between the 1930s and 1950s for criticising the Brazilian government as an active member of the Communist Party.
In 1966, he published The Brazilian Crisis, which argued for an armed struggle against Brazil’s military dictatorship which had been installed as a result of the 1964 coup in the country. Two years later, Marighella was expelled from the Communist Party and he went on to found the ALN, which became involved in robbing banks to finance guerilla warfare and the kidnapping of high profile individuals to win the release of political prisoners.
After the ALN’s involvement in the kidnapping of US Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, Marighella became a target. On 4 November 1969, he was ambushed by the police in São Paulo and shot dead.
The release of the biopic during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, an apologist of Latin American military dictatorships and nostalgic for the bloodthirsty Brazilian regime that acts as the de facto villain of the film, is timely.
Marighella was supposed to be released in early 2020 but Ancine, the government agency that works to promote national cinema in Brazil, withheld funding of R$1 million (roughly £134,000) for its distribution, alleging a problem in the accounts for another production by O2 Filmes, the film’s producer.
Celebrated actor Wagner Moura, who debuts here as the director, had no doubt that the film was censored.
“It was a time when Bolsonaro was talking about filtering and regulating Ancine," Moura said at a press event about the movie.
Brazil hasn't had a censorship department since the end of the military dictatorship, which ended with popular elections in the mid-1980s. The constitution that was enacted at that time was so influenced by the "years of lead" (as the times under the regime are known) that censorship was expressly prohibited by the law.
There are, of course, age rating systems and, with the justification of "protecting the innocence of children", certain films, events or exhibitions are only released for certain ages, and/or with parents' authorisation, very much alike the ratings systems in the US or the UK. That's why, as long as it feels the need to comply with the Constitution, the current far-right Brazilian government needs to be at least as creative as the speeches it seeks to curb.
Hence Moura's revolt, saying that there would be "veiled censorship", different than what happened during the dictatorship, applied as a state policy.
"Today they infiltrate people in these agencies, and they make anything impossible to happen. That's what they did with Marighella. They found a way to make the release impossible, from a bureaucratic point of view,” he said in an interview with Veja magazine.
Without this being state policy, made official by documents, it is difficult to say that there is de facto censorship. Carlos Marighella symbolises much of what the radical wing of the government despises, finding it absurd that public money is used to finance "non-aligned" works.
Bolsonaro himself has even threatened Ancine with extinction because the productions it finances are no longer "aligned" with the government. His government’s special secretary of culture, former actor Mário Frias has even tweeted a response to Moura's statements: "Did you think I was going to get public funds for this pamphlet garbage?"
This type of declaration by a state representative helps to understand the Brazilian Government's relationship with culture. Its origin lies in one of the ideological consequences of the end of the military dictatorship, in which some far-right intellectuals and disgraced military personnel came to the conclusion that the left had "won" the "cultural war", infiltrating universities and fostering ideologically aligned artistic production .
This conclusion was, in part, a reaction to the establishment of the National Truth Commission, dedicated to revealing and documenting the crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship, and the result of a bad reading (and also in bad faith, it should be said) of the theories of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist intellectual.
The rise and permanence of the extreme right in power, they think, would be conditioned to the dismantling of an apparatus of cultural incentive and promotion, developed over the years of redemocratisation. This explains the presence of someone like Frias in charge of culture and the use of jeitinho to impede the exhibition of "misaligned" films such as Marighella.
This institutional trickery, in this case at least, has backfired, since a work is not an isolated object of its historical context. Since release – without the benefit of government funding - Marighella has become the most watched Brazilian production of the last two years, with 100,000 spectators in 300 theatres across the country. This is low in a historic context, as the screen quota which usually ensures that cinemas show a certain amount of locally produced content to counter the influx of foreign films is currently suspended while a new proposal, suggest by Brazil’s opposition parties, is considered.
Despite its success, the film has problems – from the annoying overacting to the lack of real interest in its main character – and it perhaps wouldn't be so celebrated in another time. In Brazil at the end of 2021, with all the absurdities committed by action or inaction of the Bolsonaro government, Marighella has become the film to be seen.
17 Dec 18 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 47.04 Winter 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text="Vital moments during our lifetimes are complicated by taboos about what we can and can't talk about, and we end up making the wrong decisions just because we don't get the full picture, says Rachael Jolley in the winter 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine" google_fonts="font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic"][vc_column_text]
Birth, Marriage and Death, the winter 2018 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.
Birth, marriage and death–these are key staging posts. And that’s one reason why this issue looks at how taboos around these subjects have a critical impact on our world.
Sadly, there are still many of us who feel we can’t talk about problems openly at these times. Societal pressure to conform can be a powerful element in this and can help to create stultifying silences that frighten us into not being able to speak.
Being unable to discuss something that has a major and often complex impact on you or your family can lead to ignorance, fear and terrible decisions.
Not knowing about information or medical advice can also mean exposing people to illness and even death.
The Australian Museum sees death as the last taboo, but it also traces where those ideas have come from and how we are sometimes more shy to talk about subjects now than we were in the past.
The Sydney-based museum’s research considers how different cultures have disposed of the dead throughout history and where the concepts of cemeteries and burials have come from.
For instance, in Ancient Rome, only those of very high status were buried within the city walls, while the Ancient Greeks buried their dead within their homes.
The word “cemetery” derives from the Greek and Roman words for “sleeping chamber”, according to the Australian Museum, which suggests that although cremation was used by the Romans, it fell out of favour in western Europe for many centuries, partly because those of the Christian faith felt that setting fire to a body might interfere with chances of an afterlife.
Taboos about death continue to restrict speech (and actions) all around the world. In a six-part series on Chinese attitudes to death, the online magazine Sixth Tone revealed how, in China, people will pay extra not to have the number “4” in their mobile telephone number because the word sounds like the Mandarin word for “death”.
It also explores why Chinese families don’t talk about death and funerals, or even write wills.
In Britain, research by the charity Macmillan Cancer Support found just over a third of the people they surveyed had thoughts or feelings about death that they hadn’t shared with anyone. Fears about death concerned 84% of respondents, and one in seven people surveyed opted out of answering the questions about death.
These taboos, especially around death and illness, can stop people asking for help or finding support in times of crisis.
Mental health campaigner Alastair Campbell wrote in our winter 2015 issue that when he was growing up, no one ever spoke about cancer or admitted to having it.
It felt like it would bring shame to any family that admitted having it, he remembered. Campbell said that he felt times had moved on and that in Britain, where he lives, there was more openness about cancer these days, although people still struggle to talk about mental health.
Hospice director Elise Hoadley tells one of our writers, Tracey Bagshaw, for her article on the rise of death cafes (p14), that British people used to be better at talking about death because they saw it up close and personal. For instance, during the Victorian period it would be far more typical to have an open coffin in a home, where family or friends could visit the dead person before a funeral. And vicar Laura Baker says of 2018: “When someone dies we are all at sea. We don’t know what to do.”
In a powerful piece for this issue (p8), Moscow-based journalist Daria Litvinova reports on a campaigning movement in Russia to expose obstetric abuse, with hundreds of women’s stories being published. One obstacle to get these stories out is that Russian women are not expected to talk about the troubles they encounter during childbirth. As one interviewee tells Litvinova: “And generally, giving birth, just like anything else related to women’s physiology, is a taboo subject.” Russian maternity hospitals remain institutions where women often feel isolated, and some do not even allow relatives to visit. “We either talk about the beauty of a woman’s body or don’t talk about it at all,” said one Russian.
Elsewhere, Asian-American women talk to US editor Jan Fox (p27) about why they are afraid to speak to their parents and families about anything to do with sex; how they don’t admit to having partners; and how they worry that the climate of fear will get worse with new legislation being introduced in the USA.
As we go to press, not only are there moves to introduce a “gag rule” – which would mean removing funding from clinics that either discuss or offer abortion – but in the state of Ohio, lawmakers are discussing House Bill 565, which would make abortions illegal even if pregnancies arise from rape or incest or which risk the life of the mother. These new laws are likely to make women more worried than before about talking to professionals about abortion or contraception.
Don’t miss our special investigation from Honduras, where the bodies of young people are being discovered on a regular basis but their killers are not being convicted. Index's 2018 journalism fellow Wendy Funes reports on p24.
We also look at the taboos around birth and marriage in other parts of the world. Wana Udobang reports from Nigeria (p45), where obstetrician Abosede Lewu tells her how the stigma around Caesarean births still exists in Nigeria, and how some women try to pretend they don’t happen — even if they have had the operation themselves. “In our environment, having a C-section is still seen as a form of weakness due to the combination of religion and culture.”
Meanwhile, there’s a fascinating piece from China about how its new two-child policy means women are being pressurised to have more children, even if they don’t want them — a great irony when, only a decade ago, if women had a second child they had to pay.
[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/4"][vc_icon icon_fontawesome="fa fa-quote-left" color="custom" size="xl" align="right" custom_color="#dd3333"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="3/4"][vc_custom_heading text="Taboos, especially around death and illness, can stop people asking for help or finding support in times of crisis" font_container="tag:h3|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
In other matters, I have just returned from the annual Eurozine conference of cultural journals, this year held in Vienna. It was interesting to hear about a study into the role of this specific type of publication. Research carried out by Stefan Baack, Tamara Witschge and Tamilla Ziyatdinova at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, is looking at what long-form cultural journalism does and what it achieves.
The research is continuing, but the first part of the research has shown that this style of magazine or journal stimulates creative communities of artists and authors, as well as creating debates and exchanges across different fields of knowledge. Witschge, presenting the research to the assembled editors, said these publications (often published quarterly) have developed a special niche that exists between the news media and academic publishing, allowing them to cover issues in more depth than other media, with elements of reflection.
She added that in some countries cultural journals were also compensating for the “shortcomings and limitations of other media genres”. Ziyatdinova also spoke of the myth of the “short attention span”.
At a time when editors and analysts continue to debate the future of periodicals in various forms, this study was heartening. It suggests that there still is an audience for what they describe as “cultural journals” such as ours – magazines that are produced on a regular, but not daily basis which aim to analyse as well as report what is going on around the world. Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times newspaper, spoke of his vision of the media’s future at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at London’s City University in November. As well as arguing that algorithms were not going to take over, he said he was convinced that print had a future. He said: “I still believe in the value and future of print: the smart, edited snapshot of the news, with intelligent analysis and authoritative commentary.”
His belief in magazines as an item that will continue to be in demand, if they offer something different from something readers have already consumed, was made clear: “Magazines, which also count as print – are they going to just disappear? No. Look at The Spectator, look at the sales of Private Eye.”
The vibrancy of the magazine world was also clear at this year’s British Society of Magazine Editors awards in London, with hundreds of titles represented. Jeremy Leslie, the owner of the wonderful Magculture shop in London (which stocks Index on Censorship) received a special award for his commitment to print. This innovative shop stocks only magazines, not books, and has carved out a niche for itself close to London’s City University. Well done to Jeremy. Index was also shortlisted for the specialist editor of the year award, so we are celebrating as well.
We hope you will continue to show your commitment to this particular magazine, in print or in our beautiful digital version, and think of buying gift subscriptions for your friends at this holiday time (check out https://shop.exacteditions.com/index-on-censorship for a digital subscription from anywhere in the world). We appreciate your support this year, and every year, and may you have a happy 2019.
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Rachael Jolley is editor of Index on Censorship. She tweets @londoninsider. This article is part of the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine, with its special report on Birth, Marriage and Death.
Index on Censorship's winter 2018 issue is Birth, Marriage and Death, What are we afraid to talk about? We explore these taboos in the issue.
Look out for the new edition in bookshops, and don’t miss our Index on Censorship podcast, with special guests, on Soundcloud.
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