ABSTRACT
The old adage that “the more things change, the more they remain the same,” is, appropriately enough, attributed to the nineteenth-century (1808) French journalist Alphonse Karr. If Karr were alive today, he might still be saying much the same thing about the state of the media in Latin America.1 During the decades from the mid-to late twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, many of the countries of the region transitioned from governments directed largely by military dictatorships to those governed by democratically elected officials. Any discussion of Latin America democracy and the media automatically excludes Cuba, where little with respect to the media has changed in the last half century. As Reporters Without Borders, reflecting a sentiment shared by other media monitoring organizations, declared in its 2007 annual report covering the year 2006: “Cuba, the last dictatorship of the Americas . . . remains the world’s second largest prison for them [journalists], with 24 detained. President Fidel Castro’s handover of power to his brother Raul on 31 July [2006] did not soften the regime’s attitude to dissident media and secret police hounding of journalists increased in the second half of the year” (Reporters without Borders 2007).
