Latin America's leading newspapers devoted their Monday editorials to the discontinuation of 53-year old private TV channel Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). They all claimed that the arbitrary measure taken against an enterprise that pioneered TV broadcasting in Venezuela was "a step backwards" in the freedoms of the country and the whole region.

Editor of Venezuelan evening newspaper Tal Cual Teodoro Petkoff pointed out in the Argentinean Clarín daily that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is pressing ahead with "his plans to set up a mass media hegemonic position." In this regard, he said that if the excuse not to renew a broadcasting license for RCTV was "its involvement in a coup", then Venezuelan TV channel Venevisión "should have been taken off the air a long time ago."

Brazilian Jornal do Brasil asserted that the Venezuelan ruler's decision on RCTV was "a slap on Latin America's face" and regretted the fact that "the stable democracies in the region, including Brazil, were unable to prevent another hazardous demonstration of contempt for freedom."

In an editorial headlined "Another stair", Uruguayan newspaper El País said that
"neo-totalitarianism" is a form of government that is beginning to spread "dangerously" to all Latin America. For this daily, President Chávez did refuse to renew a license for Radio Caracas Televisión because it "was not submissive."

Paraguay's ABC Color daily front page, headlined "Chávez kills freedom in Venezuela", claimed that the discontinuation of RCTV entails "a turn towards totalitarianism."

La Prensa newspaper from Panama said that President Chávez "is about to become an autocrat" and that the two remaining powers in the Venezuelan state, that is, the Legislature and the Judiciary, bowed silently down to the move against Radio Caracas Television.

Another Panamanian daily, El Siglo, asserted that, with the failure to renew a broadcasting license for RCTV, an inalienable right was mortally wounded in the hands of the Venezuelan ruler, whom they call "the Americas' new dictator."

Even though they did publish a lot of information about the RCTV case, the Sunday night events regarding the independent Venezuelan TV station did not hit the headlines either in Colombia or in Chile.

Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre said that the arbitrary decision on RCTV is "a step backwards for the Venezuelan people" and consolidates "a one-person political movement intended to put an end to the freedoms of the citizens", news agency Efe reported.

Renowned columnist Julio Rodríguez wrote in the Costa Rican daily La Nación, "Night fell again over freedom in Venezuela (on Sunday night). Just as Cain was fearful of God's glance, foes of freedom (in Venezuela) fear the independent press' glance", he added.

For Mexico's El Universal newspaper, the end of RCTV is "the beginning of an increasing totalitarian phase within Chavezism." Israel López, from Mexican daily Excelsior, thinks the Venezuelan government's move "sets a dreadful precedent in Latin America."

Hondura's La Tribuna daily warned that "the eclipse took place in Venezuela, but the shadow was cast over all of us as it was an outrage on freedom that concerns everyone."

International relations expert Alejandro Deustua from Peruvian newspaper El Comercio pointed out that "the Venezuelan government has sped up the pace of its machinery to destroy the liberal values and institutions in the country as well as in the whole hemisphere."

Also Peruvian La República newspaper claimed that the "'dangerous' thing about RCVT was its nationwide reach, which was envied by the government and had no parallel among the remaining TV networks, out of which only one could be said to be opposition-aligned."

Ecuadorian daily El Comercio said that the decision not to renew RCTV license "is the same old story in Latin America where an authoritarian government does not approve of the press: first comes the harassment, then the division followed by (the imposition of) economic measures and finally the closure."

El Diario de Hoy, from El Salvador, asserted that the new television channel (TVes) replacing RCTV is "an instrument of President Hugo Chávez's propaganda machinery."
 
Cuban Communist Party's Granma was practically the only one regional newspaper to declare itself in favor of the non-renewal of RCTV's broadcasting license. "Thousands of Venezuelans took the Caracas streets to welcome the launch of (Televisora Venezolana Social) TVes and the closure of RCTV, a TV station that instigated the 2002 coup and nationwide oil strike that wreaked havoc in the country's economy," said the Cuban newspaper.

Translated by Servio Viloria