The Press: Censorship and Fear

It was over in a matter of minutes. The police van braked to a stop, 40 civil guards in tan shirts and steel helmets jumped out and, while most of Lima slept through a foggy March dawn, Peru's leftist military junta took over two opposition newspapers, the morning Expreso and evening Extra. The remaining opposition Lima daily—La Tribuna—was then reduced to a mimeograph edition when the regime embargoed its presses.

Military repression is no novelty in South America. But in Peru, where press freedoms have gone relatively unchallenged for nearly 50 years, the latest...