The brothers had organized that night – the eve of Three Kings Day – a family get-together at their parents’ home. Salvador had come ands gone twice, taking other relatives on his motorcycle along March 1 Street. On the last trip, around 8:00 p.m., a masked man suddenly appeared from the bushes on the lefthand side of the road. He took three steps and, now five feet away, raised his arm. He shot at pointblank range, Gaspar said. Salvador accelerated. The bullet, which lodged in his hip, had entered through his left shoulder, which indicated that he leaned forward as soon as he saw the assailant, aware of his intentions. He sped up again, lost control and overturned.

The assailant wore a black mask. He approached coolly and fired again. But his shot missed. Gaspar says he took Salvador by the arm and as he pressed his own chest with his left hand, murmured, "This can’t be happening." The masked man was still there, imperturbable. They staggered for 20 to 25 yards, but Salvador, exhausted, said, "I can’t go on. My heart has had it." And he fell down, breathing with difficulty. Gaspar turned on his heels and shouted at the assailant, "Why? Are you going to kill me?" There was no one around. The masked man then fired into the air as Salvador, exhausted, said, "I am going, I’m dying." And he died, face down. The masked man fired a fourth time, but no bullet came out, and made off in the bushes. A desperate Gaspar ran in search of help.

During the uproar, Salomón, another of the Medina brothers, saw at the front door of his house Daniel Enciso Marilin, 29, the alleged owner of that gun which was said to have belonged a policeman, according to detective Mónico Orué. Marilin told Salomón gravely, "Your brother was hit by a bullet." He was one of the last to arrive at the scene of the crime shortly before the body was removed.

"It was premeditated murder, calculated, a settling of accounts, a contract killing" says Gladys Vallejos, interim district attorney in Curuguaty, 24 miles from Capiibary. "Who took out the contract?" she wonders. She acknowledges that the police did not act swiftly, failing to set up roadblocks that same evening and to report the crime within the required six hours. But the police were unable to set up any roadblock because they had only one vehicle, a Mitsubishi truck that was broken down. "We have one motorcycle that does not work very well to patrol twice a day a very large area with bad roods and a population of 40,000," detective Orué said by way of justification, speaking in a ramshackle wooden office, just like most of the houses in Capiibary, in which at least the police radio still works. That evening he had only one patrolman on duty, but even he was busy holding a barbecue to raise some money from local people. The others in the 12 to 14 man unit had gone to another town to collect their wages. Based on initial evidence, district attorney Vallejos ordered the arrest of Marilin, Milcíades Maylin (his cousin), the alleged killer, and Timoteo Cáceres, the principal of the school where Salvador taught. Cáceres was a suspect because he had on occasions threatened neighbors with a gun he used to wear in his belt and he used to brandish like a sword, fearful that Salvador, or possibly his brother Gaspar, might take the job he had held for five years – a post of importance in a small community for which, it is said, he received a salary of nearly 1.5 million guaraníes (just over $400) a month.

Cáceres, 32, was often drunk and failed to turn up for classes, according to detective Orué, causing members of the March 1 Street Parents Association to ask Salvador to write a letter to the authorities complaining about his poor conduct and seeking his dismissal. It is a theory of district attorney Vallejos that, blinded by rage, he had hired cousins Mailyn and Marilin to carry out the murder. The previous week he had put his motorcycle and stereo equipment up for sale, hoping to raise 700,000 guaraníes (a little under $200) – enough to get rid of someone in Paraguay’s back country, according to Pablo.

Blurred theory

Claudio Barrientos López and Mirta Miranda had been that same evening, until 10:00 p.m., at the home of Mirta’s brother, Rolando Miranda Martínez. It was a Friday like any other in Capiibary, 175 miles from Asunción. There was nothing new, nothing to talk about other than the sticky heat and the violent downpours of a particularly hot summer. They had drunk mate, an infusion popular in the River Plate region whose Paraguayan version, known as tereré, is drunk on the rocks and encourages conversation, even confessions, so it is said.

Claudio, a 23-year-old unmarried farmer, had little or nothing to confess. Nor did his girl friend Mirta, and even less Rolando, the host, a 26-year-old electrician. But that night, after they said their farewells, the tereré would leave a bitter taste.

Claudio and Mirta went home, two blocks away. At the doorway they noticed the shadow of an intruder in the room. They did not go in. Fearful, they went to seek help and came back with Rolando. Claudio stopped at the door and shouted "Police!" pretending to be one. The intruder, or supposed burglar, turned around as he rummaged through the couple’s clothes. He had an old 38 caliber revolver with a sawed-off barrel, according to the later police report. He was going to run, but he tripped at the doorway, felled by a blow.

It was Claudio who had punched him, so hard that he staggered and dropped the gun. Rolando jumped on him, grabbed him by the neck and noticed that it was Milcíades Mailyn, a neighbor with no job and no fixed address, a 23-year-old bachelor who cried out in Guaraní that he was a friend of theirs and not to kill him, that he had just committed a crime and needed urgently to change his clothes so the police would not recognize him. Asked where he had committed the crime, he replied at a bushy spot on March 1 Street.

The police report said the gun Mailyn had on him, which Claudio and Rolando kept after the struggle, contained three spent cartridges and one unused bullet. The two let him go, not knowing that a couple of hours earlier Salvador had been shot. The next day, two unidentified people went to the couple’s home – on behalf of Mailyn, they said – to recover the gun, or else. They got it.

The day after that, on Sunday, police arrested Mailyn. It was around 4:00 p.m. He was with six friends. Nervously, he said his name was Bernardo Gaona. But he was identified by his cousin Marilin, who also arrested after his own identity was checked with the National Police database. Neither of the two wanted to make any statement. Cáceres meanwhile hired one of the most expensive attorneys in Coronel Oviedo, a town known as a venue of meetings of the Colorado Party. He had hired the lawyer with the support of local political leaders or for no pay, Pablo believes, given that he had sold his motorcycle and stereo equipment prior to the murder. It could be a coincidence, or a lead.

The Colorado Party has ruled Paraguay since 1954, including during the 35-year Stroessner dictatorship. In the elections for vice president of Paraguay, following the assassination of incumbent Luis María Argaña on March 23, 1999, the winner was Julio César "Yoyito" Franco of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA). Salvador got along with him, though he professed no political alliance. One of the radio station’s board of directors, Carlos Balbuena, says that they had begun to talk of the possibility of Salvador running for local or provincial office, but nobody could confirm this.

Cáceres enjoys a certain political backing, according to a police report – from Colorado party members, presumably. The gun was said to have ended up in the hands of Justo Franco, 18, the son of Luis Alberto Franco, local leader of the Colorado Party who, according to Pablo, is a suspect in the lumber trafficking that Salvador had exposed in his radio broadcasts. The Francos are not related to Vice President Franco.

"He was in the way"

District attorney Vallejos met with Claudio Barrientos López and Mirta Miranda. She told them to collaborate as witnesses, otherwise they would be regarded as accomplices. Their arrest was eventually ordered, along with Rolando Miranda Martínez, Mirta’s brother, as well as Pablo Quiñonez Torres, implicated in the lumber trafficking, and Justo Franco. All five remain at large, as does Luis Alberto Franco, Justo’s father and former president of the Colorado Party in Capiibary.

It is a curious state of affairs, especially after the meeting of at least Claudio and Mirta with district attorney Vallejos – as curious as the raids the police carried out by kept secret but reported on by the radio station where Salvador worked – a sign that if any one of them had the gun, they would have had time and opportunity to get rid of it.

Similarly, this indicates that the initial theory of the school principal being angered by an alleged plot against him has become blurred – or does it mean that it has taken on a new twist? Certainly it has acquired a political perspective with tinges of organized crime, more to do with Salvador’s one-air disclosures than with his work as a teacher. In his reports for ABC Color, Pablo wrote in September 2000 about the relationship of Luis Alberto Franco with the lumber business in the forestry reserves administered by the government.

The administration of President Luis González Macchi did nothing following the murder, according to residents of Capiibary – not immediately, anyway. Interior Minister Julio Fanego let it be known that Salvador had been treading on thin ice, or – in his words – stepping on someone. "So the easiest thing for the criminal was to kill him, just to shut him up. He was bothering some criminal engaging in lumber trafficking there, cattle rustling or something of the kind," he minister said. This would that Salvador’s murder had more to do with his journalistic work than his teaching.

Carlos Mariano Godoy, an ABC Color reporter sent from Coronel Oviedo so Pablo did not have to cover his brother’s murder, said, "Lack of personal safety is our daily bread in the Paraguay provinces; this case had a repercussion because was a journalist."

Murdered in a similar way, as he rode his motorcycle, was Benito Ramón Jara, a stringer for Radio Ybu Yaú, in the town of the same name in northern Paraguay on the border with Brazil on April 13, 2000. He was shot six times. Another journalist, Mauri Konig from the Brazilian newspaper O Estado do Paraná, was badly beaten with sticks and chains, he testified, while investigating the unlawful recruitment into the Paraguayan Army and police of young men from Brazil. One of his three assailants was in uniform. The journalist had earlier been reporting on Brazilian child prostitution in the area.

The most notorious – and still unsolved – case has, however, been the death of Santiago Leguizamón, owner of Radio Mburucuya and a stringer for Radio Ñandutí, Canal 13 TV and the daily Noticias of Asunción. After reporting on drug trafficking, smuggling and corruption he was murdered on April 26, 1991, Journalists Day in Paraguay, in the town of Pedro Juan Caballero, near Yby Yaú.

One attack a day

Paraguay in general has been having a hard time for some while now. As Msgr. Ricardo Valenzuela, auxiliary bishop of Asunción, said in a sermon, "We want for our country a firm and stable democracy that ensures peaceful promotion of human rights for all but, sadly, this is conditioned by economic setbacks, crisis in the political institutions and loss of moral values. This particularly affects the most humble people, the poor."

In Capiibary, as detective Orué said after a little more than two months in the job, there must be a little bit of everything. "The worst hit by armed holdups are the street vendors," he said. In mid-2000 the police burned some three acres of cannabis plants, used to make marijuana. There is also cattle rustling and, as Pablo reports, rape – a niece of his barely escaped a rape attempt on March 1 Street. People feel defenseless, many go armed, some even thinking of forming a citizen’s crime watch to protect themselves.

The 1999 statistics show an armed robbery a day in the stretch between Mbutuy and Curuguaty – the red dirt road that links Tayy Caré, Pinoty, Yasy Cañy, Capiibary, Río Corrientes and March 1 Street, among places considered dangerous. In August of that year the United State Embassy warned American citizens not to travel in the provinces of San Pedro, where Capiibary is located, and Canindeyú.

The masked man killed Salvador, but given his insistence the target could well have been Gaspar – or booth of them. "He had to kill someone in the family, I believe," says Pablo. He thinks that it all might have started in Ara Pyahu township, where Gaspar was the school principal. He says a gang led by one Rosendo Villasanti was operating in that area, carrying out armed robberies and other outrages. The local community wanted to denounce them and found a voice in Gaspar.

The Villasantis are believed to be eight to 10 brothers who had contact with cousins Mailyn and Marilin and their relatives, another eight or 10 people, and with a loan shark from another town, according to Pablo. The information came first from him, for ABC Color, and then from Salvador for his radio station, where Salvador stood in as host of the morning news and music program when the regular presenter was absent. He clearly gave prominence to everything his brother wrote about Capiibary and surrounding areas.

Salvador used to conduct his own investigations into assaults, cattle rustling and lumber or marijuana trafficking, Pablo said. "He would send me the details I would publish them in ABC Color," he added. When he acted as host of the radio program, Salvador gave prominence to this kind of story. He was a stand-in to be feared by the criminal element every time he came to the microphone – which was not that often, though he was the chairman of the radio station’s board of directors.

No sooner had Mailyn been arrested than Francisco Céspedes Podas, a 43-year-old farmer, filed a formal complaint against him for the murder of his brother, Amado, on May 9, 1997, in Capiibary. At around 10:00 p.m. that night a short, thin, fair-haired man, accompanied by five other men, asked for a beer in Amado Céspedes Podas’ shop, being run at that time by his girlfriend, Hermengilda Maidana. As she turned round, the blond man – whose description matched that of Mailyn – hit her on the head with a bottle that he had picked up from the counter.

Hermengilda managed to call for help as she lay on the floor. Amado jumped out of bed where he had been sleeping. The blond man, according to the complaint, shot at him as soon as he came into the shop. Amado, hit in the chest, fell dead, Francisco’s deposition said. It was only going to be a holdup, the booty to be 700,000 guaraníes ($200), a radio cassette recorder and a bottle of Arístocrata rum.

Lack of protection

"We are exposed every day," says Pablo, wearing a cap, a sleeveless jacket and a T-shirt, his car bearing the logo of ABC Color. "Now we have police protection, but I don’t know what I am going to do when this is all over. I’m scared – for my wife and for my two daughters (a months-old baby and a 13-year-old teenager). At my brother’s funeral, as I was bearing the coffin, a guy came up to me and said, ‘You are going to die the same.’ He then disappeared. I was wearing the flak jacket the police had given me."

Police protection continues for Salvador’s parents, but was lifted on January 15 at Pablo’s home. In his first report for ABC Color since the murder, about road work in the area, he has felt unprotected. "I was an easy target and they could have killed me," he said.

Salvador had received just one death threat in his life. It was at the radio station, face to face. Neither Gaspar, a member of the board of directors, nor Pablo nor Salomón knew who had issued the threat, only that it happened, and that it had come after Salvador, then chairman of the board, decided to name himself managing director and fire the artistic director and vice president, Mercado José Benítez González. The board members reacted the same day, December 12, 2000, by sending him a letter asking for an explanation – which he never gave. "The radio station was left without a leader," said Balbuena, a member of the board.

Salvador was born in 1972 in Yaguarón, Paraguary province. He was single and had no girlfriend. In high school he won two gold medals for good performance. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer, according to Pablo, who encouraged him to be a journalist. He studied law for three years in Asunción, where in late March 1999 he took part in a demonstration called "Paraguayan March" protesting the assassination of Paraguayan Vice President Argaña. During the demonstration, seven young men were killed by snipers.

Salvador, short of money, soon returned to Capiibary. He had also done a year of teacher training. He completed a course on the Guaraní language, of which he became a teacher.

"At a New Year’s party I warned him that everything we had been exposing should be reported to the Attorney General’s Office and the police," Pablo said. "But he did not trust them. He had never been threatened, except at the radio station. He was an enemy of corruption and unlawful activity."

Pablo often receives threats. "I take them in my stride, but they still worry me," he said. "They began as a result of a report I did about an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in the National Animal Health Service in Canindeyú that was published in the paper. There were people who phoned me . I do not carry a gun. My only weapons are a camera and a computer."

District attorney Vallejos believes that things are going well, but, strangely, five suspects remain at large. She saw two of them before they fled. It is as if they were tipped off, including by the police, that they were going to be arrested if they did not collaborate. And in fact, they did not collaborate. She said that the three who were arrested – and are now being held at the Coronel Oviedo Regional Penitentiary – are the chief suspects. "Professor Cáceres was an enemy of the victim and the other two, Mailyn and Marilin, are well-known local villains," she said. The three lodged appeals, which were turned down. "Until the date on which they will be formally charged, May 9, I do not rule out any theory," she added. "In the following 10 days the oral hearing will be held." This will be at the Capiibary church.

On the day of the murder, as Claudio Barrientos López, Mirta Miranda and Rolando Miranda Martínez were drinking their tereré, not knowing that they would end up being accomplices in a murder through their fear of reprisals, Salvador was giving a ride on his motorcycle to first his sister and two of his nephews then one of his sisters-in-law. He later went back for Gaspar, whose home is located beside the radio station.

The masked man, believed to be Mailyn, could have shot at Salvador on either of the two previous occasions, when he was on his own. But he did not. He shot on the third occasion, when he was giving Gaspar a ride. That was the blow. He thus silenced the sound of the engine and with it the power of the word – or freedom of expression.