Returning To The Fold? p. 18

By: Robert Buckman

Guatemalan newspaper director, who resigned rather than
submit to self-censorship, seeks to return to his paper sp.

MARIO ANTONIO SANDOVAL, a Guatemalan newspaper director who resigned in May rather than submit to self-censorship and who later became an adviser to the country's new reform-minded president, has resigned that post and is exploring his chances of returning to journalism.
"I discovered that journalists make lousy bureaucrats," Sandoval said, referring to his decision to resign in January as an adviser and speechwriter for President Ramiro de Leon Carpio.
On May 25, then-President Jorge Serrano made an abortive effort to suspend the constitution and rule by decree, ordering censorship of the country's daily newspapers and broadcast media (E&P, July 31, 1993, p. 14).
Sandoval was the director, or editor, of Prensa Libre, Guatemala City, the country's leading daily. He successfully faced down the censors, threatening to run the paper with their marks on the page proofs. Serrano then ordered police to surround the newspaper building to block distribution.
The following day, the paper's board of directors agreed to Serrano's offer of self-censorship. Sandoval, 46, who had spent 27 years at the newspaper co-founded by his father, resigned in protest.
"I found myself out on the street without anything to do for the first time in 27 years," Sandoval related during a recent speaking tour of four U.S. colleges. He said he joined in the mass demonstrations protesting Serrano's assumption of dictatorial powers.
"People started yelling, 'Censura a la basura (censorship to the garbage),' " he said. "There were 500 or 1,000 people from all different levels of society and we were marching in front of the Presidential Palace for two days. The second day, the government fell.
"It was interesting because this was a country that 10 or 15 years [ago] had no freedom of expression, and now the people were defending me. Even though people criticize the press, here and everywhere, when the freedom of the press is in jeopardy, people have a tendency to think they are losing something, that it's bad with journalists but it's worse without them."
Sandoval was not unemployed for long. Serrano was forced into exile in Panama, and the congress elected de Leon Carpio, Guatemala's human rights ombudsman and a friend of Sandoval since college, to succeed him. The new president named Sandoval his adviser.
Sandoval explained, however, that the title of adviser has a negative connotation among Guatemalans because of the sycophants who traditionally have surrounded the president. Moreover, unlike in the United States, the salary of presidential advisers is even more abysmal than that of journalists. After only six months, Sandoval again decided to take his chances with unemployment.
"I didn't like some of the decisions that had been made, which were not really evil, not very important," he said. "But I saw myself like a parrot in a henhouse. We were a bunch of birds but of different kinds. I was green and the other guys were white. They laid eggs, and I tried to lay an egg but something else happened. I wanted them to fly and they couldn't fly, wanted them to speak and they couldn't speak, so I decided to go back to the jungle where we journalists belong."
Sandoval insisted that he had no major policy differences with de Leon Carpio, whom he credited with fully restoring and respecting press freedom.
"At Cabinet meetings, he would joke, 'Mario, don't you think your colleagues [in the press] are getting too aggressive?' " Sandoval recalled. "But he would never do anything like Serrano did."
Sandoval said ideally, he would like to return to Prensa Libre, where he worked his way up through the ranks and had been director less than a year when Serrano suspended the constitution. He admitted that it is unlikely that he could return as director [his friend Jos? Eduardo Zarco is now in the post] but suggested that he would be content as a political analyst.
He has been writing his old column, "Catafejo" (Spyglass) five times a week, for no pay. So far, however, the paper's other four board members (Sandoval votes his elderly father's one-fifth share) have not approached him about a full-time position, he said.
"I think they would like me to apologize for what I did, but I have nothing to apologize about," he said.
His father, also named Mario, has agreed to share his income from his stock in the 42-year-old daily until Sandoval decides what to do.
Sandoval said leaving the paper was a painful decision but called it "a matter of values, a matter of principle." He said he still feels the same about self-censorship and he believes that he acted properly.
"If you're a censor and I manage to fool you, then the guy who sent you as the censor will be angry at you and not at me because I can say, 'Look, had the censor's approval . . . ,' " he reasoned. "But self-censorship is worse because they are asking you to think with someone else's mind. They come and say, 'We're not going to tell you what to print; you should use your own common sense.' But your idea of common sense is surely not the same as the other fellow's."
He insisted that he harbors no rancor toward Prensa Libre's board members regarding the self-censorship issue but lamented, "I was a victim of friendly fire. My adversaries never defeated me. Serrano never defeated me. I was defeated by my friends."
There have been other changes in the Guatemalan press since Sandoval left Prensa Libre. In July, a new newspaper, La Republica, published by former television newsman Gonzalo Marroqu?n and his brother, Luis, joined the four private and one government-owned dailies in the crowded market.
Also in July, Jorge Carpio, publisher of the second-ranked daily in the country, El Gr?fico, and two-time unsuccessful presidential candidate, died from injuries that he received in what appeared to be a routine mugging in the city of Chichicastenango. His wife and son, who now run the paper, complain that de Leon Carpio, Carpio's first cousin, has done nothing to solve the homicide.
Sandoval said El Graf?co's circulation had dwindled during Carpio's sojourns into presidential politics in 1985 and 1990; the paper gave him unmistakenly slanted coverage, but both times he lost in runoffs, the latter time to Serrano.
Since Carpio's death, Sandoval said, the paper's circulation has begun increasing.
"What this tells you is that when the readers don't see any hidden agenda in [a] newspaper, they gain again the confidence that is taken away when someone is participating in politics," Sandoval noted.
During his U.S. tour in February, Sandoval addressed journalism students at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah; the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette; Loyola University in New Orleans; and Florida International University in Miami.
Sandoval said that if he doesn't return to Prensa Libre, he will weigh other options, including starting a newspaper for university students or perhaps teaching journalism. He added that he also could start a public relations agency.
"I wouldn't like it," he confessed, "but I sure have the contacts!"