Juan Pablo Cárdenas, Chile
By Global Journalist Staff Posted Sat, Apr 1 2000
Juan Pablo Cárdenas was the editor in chief of the weekly news magazine Análisis during the dark days of General Augusto Pinochet’s military regime. A prominent opponent of the Chilean dictator, he faced constant harassment and legal prosecution, was detained seven times and was sentenced in 1987 to 18 months of nighttime imprisonment. Análisis was shut down on several occasions, and the magazine’s foreign news editor, José Carrasco Tapia, was murdered in 1986.
Juan Pablo Cárdenas, or Juanpa as he is called by his friends, was born in Santiago Chile on Dec. 1, 1949. He studied journalism at the Universidad Católica de Chile, where he was later a professor at the School of Journalism and editor of the weekly magazine Debate Universitario until 1973.
Cárdenas founded the opposition weekly Análisis in 1977. The magazine was among the few publications to report on government corruption and to publicize human rights abuses under the Pinochet dictatorship. It quickly incurred the wrath of the military regime.
In September 1986 foreign news editor José Carrasco was kidnapped a day after the guerrilla group FPMR made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the president. Hours later, the journalist’s body was found riddled with bullets. As the Pinochet regime tightened restrictions under a state of siege, Análisis was shut down three times in 1986 alone. Cárdenas and his staff faced harassment, physical threats and a barrage of litigation for offending the president or the armed forces. News vendors were told not to sell copies of the magazine, and owning too many back issues of Análisis was enough to get one in trouble for having subversive material.
Undaunted, Cárdenas continued to put out his magazine. “They may to be able to seize our media from us, they may be able to obstruct us and censor us, but they will not take away from us our right to fight for the future we deserve,” he said.
In May 1987 Cárdenas was sentenced to 541 days of nighttime prison for offending the armed forces in his editorials. He began to serve his sentence, sharing a prison cell with criminals from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and then going to his office during the day. His time in jail began upon returning from Finland, where he received a World Association of Newspapers (FIEJ) Golden Pen of Freedom award. His nightly trips to jail attracted international attention, and many colleagues, sympathizers, television crews and photographers accompanied him. At one time, the playwright Arthur Miller accompanied Cárdenas to the prison gate.
After his release the government’s harassment of Cárdenas continued. In November 1989 his house was partly destroyed after unknown assailants set it on fire. “During one of his few days of freedom, I helped him gather his scorched books, still damp from the saving water used by the neighbors who had arrived just in time,” wrote Luis Sepúlveda, a Chilean author. “In his house in San Vicente, in the south of Santiago, Juanpa has the most beautiful collection of books, half-destroyed by the flames, with titles that are barely legible, which we, his friends, have christened Biblioteca Torquemada,” which is an allusion to Tomás de Torquemada, the Spanish Grand Inquisitor responsible for 2,000 burnings at the stake.
Democracy and press freedom returned to Chile in March 1990 when Patricio Aylwin of the center-left CPD Party was elected. The opposition press, however, suffered in the transition as their readership dwindled and subsidies from abroad dried up. After 15 years, Análisis was forced to close.
Cárdenas, who served as press attaché at the Embassy of Chile in Mexico from 1994 to February 2000, is currently a professor at the University of Chile’s School of Journalism. He continues to write as a columnist for national and international publications.
“I have known many people who stand out for their ethical obstinacy, for their moral integrity, for their insistence on defending the rights of others, but few have been so consequent as my friend Juanpa,” says Sepúlveda. “And when I have asked if he doesn’t tire of rowing against the current, he has responded that that is the only way in which he understands journalism.”