Caribbean & Central America - July 2026

On 8 June international press lobbies including US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) hailed the decision under Guatemala’s new attorney general, Gabriel Estuardo García Luna, to drop all cases against journalists from shuttered investigative outlet elPeriódico. The cases were widely considered spurious and part of the targeting of independent journalists under García Luna’s predecessor, the discredited María Consuelo Porras (2018-2026). While prospects regarding press freedom have brightened in Guatemala, they are looking increasingly ominous elsewhere in the sub-region, as outlined in the annual report on press freedom by international NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released on 30 April which singled out El Salvador and Nicaragua, both ruled by authoritarian leaders, as particular cause for concern.

Even ahead of García Luna taking office on 17 May [SSR-26-06], in its 30 April report, RSF noted improvements in Guatemala under anti-corruption reformist President Bernardo Arévalo, who took office in January 2024. It ranked Guatemala 128^th out of 180 countries, up from 138^th in 2025, with RSF noting that the Arévalo administration has “committed to developing a policy to protect journalists”. However, with Arévalo’s mandate hitherto marked by his stand-off with Porras and the ‘pacto de corruptos’ network of institutional corruption with which she was aligned, RSF states that journalists and media outlets who “investigate corruption and human rights violations, or who are critical, face harassment campaigns and criminal prosecution” – a situation which many are hopeful will change under García Luna.

The most emblematic case of this criminalisation of independent journalists is that of José Rubén Zamora, elPeriódico’s founder. A leading critic of Porras, former president Alejandro Giammattei (2020-2024), and the ‘pacto’, Zamora was arrested in July 2022 on money laundering charges which were widely considered a reprisal for his investigative journalism [SSR-23-02]. In 2023 he received a six-year prison sentence, a ruling which was subsequently overturned, resulting in an order for a fresh trial. In 2024 he was granted house arrest although this order was revoked, and he was returned to prison in March 2025 [SSR-25-02]. On 23 March Guatemala’s supreme court issued a decision which recognised violations of Zamora’s rights, and confirmed his conditional release, allowing him to face legal proceedings in freedom. While this was welcomed by press freedom watchdogs, the US-based Inter-American Press Association (Iapa) nonetheless highlighted that “it does not constitute the definitive closure of the cases against him, according to media reports”.

Hopes for an improvement in Guatemala lie in stark contrast to the situation elsewhere, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In its report RSF pointed out that El Salvador, which ranks 143^rd, fell eight places in 2026, having dropped a staggering 62 places since 2019, when President Nayib Bukele first took office. Ahead of the RSF’s latest report on press freedom, Dánae Vílchez, a CPJ researcher, warned of the “systematic dismantling of press freedom” in a hearing which took place on 16 April before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on the state of exception in El Salvador, which Bukele implemented in 2022 to tackle gangs, and which remains in place. Both she and RSF highlight the key role played in this deterioration in press freedom by the 2025 foreign agents law, which requires individuals and organisations that receive foreign funding to pay a 30% tax on that income and grants the government sweeping powers to suspend or dissolve entities deemed non-compliant [SSR-25-06].

In her statement, Vílchez said the law was designed to “defund independent media”, and cited CPJ’s research showing that at least 40 journalists have fled El Salvador due to targeted state intimidation. Such has been the impact of the law that in September 2025, the country’s national journalists’ association (Apes) announced that it was closing its offices “until further notice” as a result of the legislation. Meanwhile on 7 May Salvadorean media outlet El Faro, which moved operations to Costa Rica in 2023, citing harassment by the Bukele government in response to its investigative work, denounced that the bank account and property of two partners of Trípode S.A., the company that manages the media outlet, had been frozen in what Apes described as a new phase of “intimidation and systematic harassment against El Salvador’s independent media”.

• El Faro

Also cited as evidence of Salvadorean authorities’ harassment of investigative media outlet El Faro, in 2025 seven of its journalists were forced to flee the country amid reports that arrest warrants were being prepared. This was linked to a released video interview with two former gang leaders which shed new light on the alleged negotiations between the government led by President Nayib Bukele and the country’s two main gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (M-18) ahead of a government crackdown on gangs in late March 2022 [SSR-25-07].

As regards Nicaragua, where the authoritarian government led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, has been carrying out a brutal crackdown on dissent since April 2018, RSF warns that the country’s “media landscape lies in ruins, characterized by systemic repression and a lasting collapse in working conditions for journalists”. In its latest press freedom index RSF ranked Nicaragua bottom in Central America and 168^th globally, albeit up from 172^nd in 2025. An annual report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), released on 23 April, estimates that between eight and 11 of Nicaragua’s 15 departments now have no independent media, and approximately 85% of those media outlets have terminated their operations, with independent journalists systematically prevented from covering State institutions. As of 19 June, regional NGO Fundación por la Libertad de Expresión y Democracia reported that 308 Nicaraguan journalists had been forced into exile.

Also drawing concern over its worsening press freedom situation is Costa Rica which until 2022, when now-former president Rodrigo Chaves (2022-2026), a conservative populist, took office, had long featured as Central America’s star performer in the RSF rankings. In its 2026 report RSF noted that “freedom of the press and freedom of expression are two highly respected principles in Costa Rica, an exception in Latin America”. However, it warns “there has been a steady increase in violations of press freedom in recent years” – a process which began under Chaves and looks set to continue under his anointed successor Laura Fernández, who served as his minister of the presidency (2024-2025, 2026) and planning (2022-2025) and took office on 8 May. With RSF ranking Costa Rica 38^th out of 180 countries in 2026, down from 36^th in 2025, local press freedom lobby Instituto de Prensa y Libertad de Expresión (Iplex) highlighted that the country had fallen 30 places since Chaves took office, having ranked eighth in the world in 2022.

Other countries

The latest annual report on press freedom issued by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) showed Honduras ranking 132^nd out of 180 countries in 2026, up ten places on 2025. While this reflects an improvement under the now-former president Xiomara Castro (2022-2026), who left office in January 2026, concerns were also raised about a media crackdown in relation to the November 2025 general elections [SSR-25-07]. Meanwhile Panama fell 12 places to 65^th in 2026. RSF and other international press watchdogs such as Iapa warn that the main threat to journalists in Panama comes from the legal system. A 24 April Iapa report states that in Panama, “a legal framework persists that allows the seizure of media assets from the outset of proceedings through multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits… encouraging self-censorship. This is compounded by the advancement of restrictive reforms to the right of reply.”

Revocation of US visas draws alarm in Costa Rica

In a move that it described as “unprecedented in Costa Rica’s recent history”, on 2 May La Nación, Costa Rica’s leading daily, announced that US tourist visas for several board members of Grupo Nación, the holding company that owns it, had been revoked. It said that “to date, none of our members have received any official explanation regarding the grounds for these decisions.”

Described by Iapa as “a pillar of independent journalism and a benchmark in the defense of freedom of expression in the region” in its nearly 80-year history, La Nación has been critical of now-former president Chaves, an ally of US President Donald Trump. A joint press release issued on 3 May by local press associations Iplex and Colegio de Periodistas (Colper), and Programa de Libertad de Expresión y Derecho a la Información (Proledi), an academic initiative linked to the public Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), warned that “if this decision is based on its [La Nación’s] critical position towards this government, it would be yet another worrying sign for our democratic system. Iapa notes that the “these revocations are part of a broader list of visa cancellations affecting magistrates, former lawmakers, former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Óscar Arias, and other figures from Costa Rica’s political and institutional spheres, in what has been described as an escalation of diplomatic pressure”.