Two journalists, two attacks, a fight for justice as Bolivia enters new era

A barrage of bullets was waiting for ATB cameraman Percy Suárez and six other journalists when they arrived at the Las Londras ranch in Bolivia’s Guarayos province October 28, 2021, around 852 kilometers outside of the capital, La Paz. The journalists, flown in by a local farmer association, came to cover a land dispute at the center of a violent confrontation between landowners and rural movements when armed men ambushed their motorcade and took them hostage.

“Anyone who moved was kicked, beaten with rifle butts or threatened with being set on fire,” Suarez recounted of the incident to CPJ.

The men — identified as leaders of a pro-government rural movement known as the “interculturals” — smashed their phones, seized equipment, and directed the journalists to lie face down on a gravel road scorched by the sun. But Suárez — clinging to his camera, dented and pierced by a bullet — didn’t stop filming. Nearly four years later, the viral footage is the only evidence Suárez has in his hope to bring his attackers to justice in a long-stalled case.

After two decades of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) governments marked by smear campaigns and public attacks against the press under former President Evo Morales and successor Luis Arce, Bolivia’s political landscape has entered a new chapter with Christian Democratic Party leader Rodrigo Paz clinching victory in the country’s October 19 runoff election, becoming the first leader outside MAS in 20 years.

As Paz inherits a country where impunity for attacks against journalists remains widespread — including his vice president’s attacks on the media — the incoming president’s has an opportunity to shift institutional reform and renew respect for democratic values. Yet during a June 2025 research mission to Bolivia, press advocates told CPJ there is cautious optimism and growing skepticism about whether Paz’s administration will truly change how power treats the press when it takes office November 8.

Caught in the crossfire

Journalist Percy Suárez’s attack was not an isolated incident. Land conflicts in eastern Bolivia have simmered for decades, fueled by agribusiness and shifting political alliances, with journalists often caught in the crossfire.

On May 3, 2025, Ángela Ninoska Mamani of Canal 35 Televisión Tunari was attacked while reporting outside the Cotapachi military barracks in Quillacollo, near Cochabamba, where residents had blocked a road to oppose plans to dump the city’s garbage on a land plot in their town.

By midday, a group of around 30 masked counter-protesters arrived and launched a violent attack against the protestors. They then went after the press.

“One man kicked me, another cut my leg with something sharp,” Mamani told CPJ. Her son and cameraman,Dahan Joaquín Vedia, was thrown to the ground and kicked repeatedly. “They kept shouting that we were liars, that we were against them,” Vedia added.

As her attackers closed in, Mamani recognized the group’s leader as district official Lucio Padilla and pleaded for him to help her as a journalist. Instead, Mamani said that Padilla ordered the attackers to strike harder. Neighbors who attempted to help her were beaten.

On May 4, 2025, Mamani filed a complaint against Padilla and reported that her attackers stole cameras, microphones, her wallet, and Vedia’s phone. Police then required her to attend a mediation session with Padilla in which he denied everything and later threatened to rape her if she did not drop the case, the journalist told CPJ.

“They wanted us to stop showing what was happening,” Mamani said, “but I cannot stay silent. If they silence us, they silence the community.”

Impunity as a rule

Although Suárez and Mamani’s attacks happened in different contexts, both reflect what journalist advocates say is an alarming pattern where violence against journalists goes unchecked and legal cases seeking justice stall until they are forgotten.

Suárez had video evidence and multiple testimonies; Mamani had multiple eyewitnesses. Still, justice has proven elusive for them both. Hearings were delayed, charges reduced, and Bolivian authorities often downplayed the incidents as isolated disputes — journalists, lawyers and press freedom groups told CPJ.

“We journalists do not want privileges. We demand that the law be enforced,” said Jorge Medina Monasterio, president of the Association of Journalists of Cochabamba. “If it were enforced, we could function as a minimally mature society.”

For journalists hoping the protection of the law would allow them to do their jobs, the pain is compounded by the silence that follows such attacks. 

“What hurts most is not the blows we received, but the abandonment afterward. Only some organizations still support us,” Suárez told CPJ.

Still fighting for justice

The prosecutor’s office has not set a date for Mamani’s trial after she rejected mediation and opted to move forward with the case. Although she believes the process may face delays, she remains determined to pursue justice.

“I was beaten, humiliated, and robbed, but I’m still standing,” she told CPJ.

Suárez and his colleagues were released after nearly seven hours at the ranch after a camera operator with another outlet escaped and gave news of the situation to local media. Bruised and shaken, Suárez was met by his wife, his son, and a colleague when he arrived back home in Santa Cruz, but no one from ATB.

“I felt abandoned by the station,” he said.

When Suárez’s footage was made public in a news report, it contradicted another report shared by pro-government news outlets in which the settlers were seen welcoming then-regional director of National Agrarian Reform Institute, Adalberto Rojas, and praising the government’s agrarian reform process.

Rojas denied any connections to the settlers and told media that they had no knowledge of violence at the ranch.

Suárez’s assault case has stalled after two suspects in his attack asked for the case to be managed in the Indigenous jurisdiction and were released under precautionary measures, according to a review of the judicial file made by CPJ. Three of Suárez’s attackers — Nicolás Ramírez Taboada, Martín Tejerina Villalobos, and Heber Sixto Canaza Sacaca — were declared fugitives.

Suárez’s lawyer, Raquel Guerrero, told CPJ that his case has repeatedly changed since it was filed in 2022, and at least two prosecutors and one investigator were reassigned.

“The goal is that there be a ruling, favorable or not, so that this case is not forgotten,” Suárez said, but authorities have blocked the process many times, according to Guerrero. After a July 9 hearing, she said now they are waiting for the Constitutional Court to decide whether Suárez’s two attackers will be tried in the main court or under Indigenous justice.

After the pause was announced, Suárez condemned the move in a July interview with the independent TV station RTP. 

 “I will not give up. I will keep pushing forward,” Suárez told CPJ. “The video that I have, the images give me the strength to continue, and I will stay firm in this fight.”

CPJ sent messages to the Intercultural Movement, the Ministry of Justice and Transparency, and the Supreme Court of Justice of Bolivia, but did not receive any response.