“There was great excitement in going to the newsroom,” said Mr. Aceituno, who oversaw the paper’s cultural coverage and its Sunday edition. “We were together, and there was also a context of people defending freedom of expression.”
As part of Guatemala’s road back to democracy, an international panel of investigators, starting in 2013 and backed by the United Nations, exposed widespread graft that targeted the country’s elite, leading to charges against former presidents and ministers, legislators, judges and business owners.
For elPeriodico and other independent media, it was a moment of optimism that did not last.
The progress in battling corruption in Guatemala has seen a setback in recent years and independent judges and prosecutors have become targets of recent governments. Since 2018, 35 judges, anti-corruption prosecutors and their lawyers have gone into exile.
ElPeriodico’s investigations into abuses of power and graft under various administrations have regularly put it in the government’s cross hairs.
Over the past 10 years it has been the subject of many tax audits by the revenue service. Mr. Zamora, an internationally acclaimed journalist who won an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, has been sued scores of times by the government, including a dozen ongoing claims filed by a former president and vice president.
Now the country is barreling toward presidential elections in June amid concerns that opposition candidates will not have a fair chance to run, according to international organizations.
And there will be at least one news media outlet fewer around to cover the race.
The front page of elPeriodico’s last Sunday edition was a report on nepotism in one of the largest hospitals in Guatemala, where key posts were assigned to relatives of the director. On Monday, its last day, the newspaper’s website led with an investigation about the country’s electoral authority buying equipment from a company owned by a congressman.
“What disappears is the idea that freedom of expression is the basis of democracy,” Mr. Aceituno said. “We’d like to be a metaphor for what is happening in Guatemala.’’