elPeriódico is a daily newspaper in Guatemala that often reports on corruption in the country’s government. The paper’s motto translates to, “Informative scoops and rigorous and deep journalistic investigations always.”
The paper was founded in 1996 by José Rubén Zamora. You can read about Zamora’s career on Wikipedia, but it’s safe to say that he’s a incredibly respect and brave journalist. Over the years, Zamora has been attacked, beaten, kidnapped, and held hostage. The Guatemalan government has tried almost everything they can think of to censor Zamora. This week, he was arrested on apparently false charges of money laundering. Voice of America has details on the case.
Despite the arrest, elPeriódico continues to report daily in print and on their WordPress website.
The site has been on WordPress since 2015. The elPeriódico team use Cloudflare to protect against attacks, Elementor for the site layout, and Paid Memberships Pro to help manage reader subscriptions.
This case has strong echos of Rappler’s fight to keep producing news in the Philippines.
One of their three core principles is “We use traditional and digital platforms.” So elPeriódico distributes over 30,000 paper copies daily in Guatemala City, plus they’re also WordPress and on TikTok.
