Amparo Leonor Jiménez Pallares

Este jefe militar cultiva a periodistas, y también los asesina. Para Carlos Castaño, todo radica en la imagen.

This Colombian warlord cultivates journalists. He also murders them. For Carlos Castaño, it's all about image.

[Click here for full list of documented cases]

At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels' atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In Indonesia, they recorded the violence of Indonesian-backed militias against supporters of political independence. Some who wrote about what they witnessed ended up dying because of the stories they told.

In a year that saw both an escalation of Colombia's armed conflict and a tentative beginning of peace negotiations, the press found itself in the crosshairs of nearly every party to the increasingly complicated civil war. Five journalists were killed in the line of duty, while scores of others were threatened, attacked, or kidnapped. Colombian journalists, many of whom had tolerated extremely dangerous working conditions for two decades, began leaving the country in unprecedented numbers.

September 21, 1999

His Excellency Andrés Pastrana Arango
President of the Republic of Colombia
Casa de Nariño
Santa Fe de Bogotá Colombia


Your Excellency,

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to condemn the September 16 murder of Guzmán Quintero Torres, editor-in-chief of the daily El Pilónin Valledupar, capital of the northern Cesar Department. We urge you to ensure that those responsible for this heinous crime are brought to justice.

21 de septiembre de 1999

Su Excelencia Andrés Pastrana Arango
Presidente de la República de Colombia
Casa de Nariño
Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia


Your Excellency,

El Comité para Proteger a los Periodistas (CPJ) le escribe para condenar el asesinato el 16 de septiembre de Guzmán Quintero Torres, jefe de redacción del diario El Pilón de Valledupar, capital del departamento norteño de Cesar. Le exhortamos a garantizar que los responsables de este horrible crimen serán llevados a justicia.

September 21, 1999

His Excellency Andrés Pastrana Arango
President of the Republic of Colombia
Casa de Nariño
Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia


Your Excellency,

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to condemn the September 16 murder of Guzmán Quintero Torres, editor-in-chief of the daily El Pilónin Valledupar, capital of the northern Cesar Department. We urge you to ensure that those responsible for this heinous crime are brought to justice.

Quintero, editor of the daily newspaper El Pilón in the northern town of Valledupar, was shot and killed by two assassins on a motorcycle, At 10:00 p.m., Quintero was seated in Los Cardones Hotel and Restaurant, where he often stopped on his way home from work. He was relaxing with two colleagues from the newspaper when a single assassin entered the hotel and shot the journalist four times before escaping on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.

Quintero co-founded the Journalists' Club of Valledupar. He was also the local correspondent for "Televista," a news program on the regional channel Telecaribe, and a professor at the National Correspondence University.

On September 29, police arrested two suspects, Jorge Espinal Velásquez and Rodolfo Nelson Rosado Martínez. According to local authorities, both men were identified by witnesses and are believed to be professional assassins.

Many local sources believe Quintero was killed in retaliation for his work as a journalist. They have suggested several possible motives. Quintero had recently been looking into the 1998 murder of Valledupar television journalist Amparo Leonor Jiménez Pallares. According to the attorney general's office, Jiménez was killed in retaliation for a story she broadcast in 1996 about the murder of peasants by a right-wing paramilitary death squad. 

Quintero's assassination may also have been prompted by his public denunciation, in July, of an attack on the home of Saída Maestre, a presumed guerrilla sympathizer, in the town of Patillal. Quintero published the article after speaking with Maestre, who was then kidnapped on July 5. Her horribly mutilated body was found sometime later. The right-wing United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) was linked to Maestre's murder, and many have speculated that Quintero may have signed his own death sentence by publicly denouncing the attack.