Opposition As Usual

Since last August, when he shut down Colombia's leading newspaper, El Tiempo, Strongman-President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla has been carrying on a clumsy feud with the country's traditionally free-swinging press. Last week Rojas discovered that he had stumbled again. His latest press-muzzling maneuver, an attempt to fine two of the country's largest Liberal dailies (El Espectador and El Correo) into oppositionless silence, had backfired. Rojas found himself faced by a "Freedom of the Press Fund," supported by public subscription, to pay the penalties, should he decide to levy similar fines in the future.

El Espectador was fined $2,500 for asking editorially whether it was true that 2,000 political prisoners were being held under inhuman conditions in the steaming plains of eastern Colombia; El Correo, published in Medellin, was rapped with an equal fine for an article regarded as disrespectful to constituted authority and the armed forces.

As money and pledges poured in from private citizens to pay the fines, El Espectador and El Correo politely declined the assistance, pointing out that they were well able to pay the fines themselves. But the National Press Commission, worried about the effect of such fines on smaller, less prosperous newspapers, announced that it would accept donations to pay possible future penalties. As the freedom fund grew, El Espectador continued its opposition, published a cable from former President Eduardo Santos that said tersely, "The fines with which you were honored serve once again to arraign the Office of Information and Propaganda, with its scandalous doings, before the incorruptible tribunal of public opinion."

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