Chicha Papers: How Peru's Poor Get Their 'News'

By: Mark Fitzgerald In a media-saturated land like the United States, it's hard to imagine the isolation from the news experienced by Peru's marginalized poor, even in the midst of the teeming city of Lima.

In the United States, Nielsen Media Research reported recently, 64% of households have at least two television sets, and 23% have four or more. But in Lima, fully 8% of Lima's homes don't have even one TV -- and 2% do not have access to a radio.

Yet, Lima's poor do get news, of a sort, from an assortment of sensational tabloid newspapers known collectively as the "chicha" press. The name comes from the pre-colonial national drink, an alcoholic corn or yucca brew. Peruvians have borrowed the name to describe not only the cheap newspapers, but also a kind of music and even their own mixed racial roots.

"For the 50% of Peruvians living on the edge of poverty, la prensa chicha may be the only source of news they ever get," says Aldo V?squez Ri?s, who directs the Professional School of Communications at University of San Martin de Porres in Lima.
V?squez described the typical way the working poor learn the news from the chicha papers in an interview this October during the Inter American Press Association's annual general assembly in Antigua, Guatemala.

"The typical man working in the city center may not even buy [a paper], but look at it [pinned up] on the kiosks," V?squez says. "He comes home as head of the family, and tells them. That becomes their only source of news."

Though it's the only source of news, la prensa chicha is hardly taken as gospel. "That's the funny thing, if you ask somebody do you believe it, they'll say no," V?squez says. "So you ask, why do you buy it? [They say] because it's entertaining."

Peru's chicha papers will seem familiar to anyone who has seen the lurid "red pages" evening papers of Mexico City -- or recalls the gamy roots of today's shiny National Enquirer. Bloody car crashes and unexpected death of any kind are staples, along with cheesecake, political news or near-news reported in a sensationalist style under screaming headlines, and the Latin American newspaper standby known as "far?ndula" -- lighter-than-air news about celebrities. Chicha papers also eschew the formal Castellan of the quality press in favor of "jerga," or street language.

The chicha tabs delight in reporting the scandals of politicians and pop stars -- but for years during the 1990s, they were themselves part of a massive corruption scheme.

As then-President Alberto Fujimori became more authoritarian and his popularity looked shaky, Vladimiro Montesinos -- a master manipulator who headed the state intelligence service, known by its Spanish initials as SIN -- began paying huge bribes to television stations and to the chicha press. He bought laudatory coverage for Fujimori, and scurrilous attacks on political enemies.

Montesinos eventually paid to create more than a half-dozen chicha tabs. One was even named after the Indian nickname for Fujimori, whose parents immigrated from Japan: El Chino.

That era ended in 2000 with revelations of numerous scandals, and with Fujimori and Montesinos fleeing Peru.

The chicha tabs immediately turned their screaming headlines against their old benefactors.

"But even after Fujimori fled, the prensa chicha kept on," the j-school director V?squez Ri?s says. "Some went out of business because the subsidies were no longer there, but other stayed because they have the readership."

They also serve an audience of the poor that the "respected press" has no interest in competing for, he notes.

Peru's chicha press need not feel any shame about what it does, one chicha editor argued recently in an interview posted on the media Web site www.yachay.com.pe.

"The sensationalist tabloids are not a Latin American invention," said Mario Ghibellini, who edits a Sunday supplement for the chicha daily Ojo. "In the United States, you go to the supermarket and it's full of newspapers that say Elvis was seen fishing in Idaho last week. Not to talk about the British dailies, The Sun or The Daily Mirror, that pay a million bucks to see a princess topless and that invent tons of things. I don't see how they can throw stones, these supposedly more developed countries."

PAN-AM HIGHWAY

A violent year for Latin American journalists is ending violently: A reporter is fatally shot while covering a demonstration in Nicaragua. Journalists are kidnapped in Mexico. Death threats against Peruvian journalists increase, and an investigative editor's body guard is shot in a suspicious incident. Venezuela tightens the legislative screws on the press, while freedom-of-information bills advance in Honduras.

BRAZIL

The Brazilian National Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution Dec. 8 that the Miami-based Inter American Press Association says would finally allow the federal judiciary to take on crimes committed against journalists. "This is an important step in the fight for press freedom since many of the crimes committed against journalists in Brazil go unpunished and cases are tangled up in the justice system at the state level," said IAPA President Alejandro Mir? Quesada, publisher of the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio. IAPA has investigated 19 cases of murdered Brazilian journalists as part of its Project Impunity.

COLOMBIA

A psychologist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder is conducting clinics for journalists covering Arauca state, the violent border zone with Venezuela, the Inter Press Service News Agency reported. Colombian psychologist Marta Chinchilla calls journalists "the least protected" psychologically when working in a war zone. She is part of the "Resiliencia" support group created in 2003 by a university journalism program in Bogota.

HONDURAS

Congress in late October began debate on an "Access to Public Information Law" that was drafted by the Committee for Freedom of Expression (C-Libre), a group representing Honduran journalists and other free-press activists.

MEXICO

Photographer Gregorio Rodr?guez Hern?ndez of the newspaper El Debate de Mazatl? was shot to death while he ate dinner with his two children, one three and the other six, at a restaurant in Escuinapa, Sinaloa, on Nov. 28, the Center for Social Communications (CENCOS) reported. The gunman, who fired three shots, escaped in a waiting car. A few weeks earlier, CENCOS reported, another photographer for the paper, Martin Urista Morales, was physically attacked by police officers of an organized crime unit, who choked him and took his equipment.

Four reporters were held by a mob and nearly lynched while covering a demonstration at a cemetery in Hidalgo state Nov. 7, CENCOS reported. Pablo Guerrero Guzm?n of the weekly El Rollo was beaten when he tried to take pictures. His editor, Rodolfo Wong Montes de Oca, who is also a correspondent for the Mexico City daily Excelsior, was attacked in his car along with two other reporters of the weekly. They were held by the crowd, which demanded a "donation" of 400,000 pesos (about $3,500 U.S.) for construction of a chapel at the cemetery. The journalists were freed after two hours when police intervened, and made them sign a "covenant" whose contents they did not know, CENCOS said.

Some 50 people stormed the offices of the daily newspaper Diario de las Huastecas in Huejutla de Reyes, Hidalgo, Nov. 9 to complain about the way the paper covered a crime in their community. They occupied the office for about two hours, CENCOS reported.

NICARAGUA

Maria Jos? Bravo, a correspondent for the Managua daily La Prensa, was shot fatally Nov. 9 while covering clashes between rival parties who were disputing an election result in an municipality north east of the capital, IAPA reported. Bravo, 26, was shot in the chest and died on the way to the hospital. The town's former mayor, Eugenio Hern?ndez Gonz&@225;lez, was arrested at the scene as the principal suspect in the murder, IAPA said.

PERU

In a mysterious incident in late October, a bodyguard hired to protect the head of the investigative team of the Lima daily El Comercio was shot in the leg as he drove home alone after work, the Lima-based Institute for Press and Society (IPYS) reported Nov. 16. Luis Ch?vez's car was stopped by another car that blocked his way. When he got out to complain, the driver of the car shot him in the leg with a pistol and then fled. The bodyguard, who was not seriously injured, was protecting Fernando Ampuero del Bosque, who, along with other El Comercio investigative reporters, began getting threatening phone calls last spring.

VENEZUELA

President Hugo Ch?vez on Dec. 8 signed into law the vaguely worded "Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television" that free-press and human-rights advocates believe he will use to threaten press freedoms. The law restricts broadcast of scenes of violence or sex, but also prohibits reports that "endanger national security" or "incite disruption of public order," clauses that could be used to justify government censorship of news.