GUATEMALA: Street Incident

President Ydigoras’ administration is used to being roasted by opposition newsmen, but never has it had to take such heat from a girl. Six months ago, when she got a job on the capital’s influential (circ. 15,000) afternoon daily La Hora, Irma Flaquer, 22, lost no time establishing herself as one of the government’s sharpest critics. Writing to help support her two children by an early, unsuccessful marriage, the pretty young newshen in her column denounces governmental corruption, ridicules its foreign policies, champions women’s rights, favors birth control, blames the Latins’ concept of manhood for the evils of prostitution, campaigns against poverty, slums, alcoholism and juvenile delinquency. Naturally her column, entitled “Lo que los otros callan” (What others won’t say), is read with a certain amount of disfavor by the regime. But what to do about it?

To lessen Irma’s public effect. Information Chief Augusto Mulet Descamps tried both sneers and smears. He publicly branded her opinions “treasonable,” and in official information bulletins, called her a vamp and a blackmailer. Mulet, 48, even tried to plant a story that Irma used her column to get even with him because he spurned her advances. When most Guatemalan newspapers refused to print that story, he wanted to run it as a paid ad, was again turned down.

One day a fortnight ago, as Irma was walking home from a radio station where she delivers a 15-minute daily news commentary, she was confronted by one Gloria Castillo, a brawny, 150-lb. political action worker, who bosses the strongly pro-Ydigoras market women’s union. According to Irma, Gloria roared: “You newspaper people are a bunch of sons of bitches. The old man is fed up with you.” Then she grabbed Irma (95 Ibs.) by the hair, kicked and punched her senseless. When Irma regained consciousness, she had the makings of a shiner, sundry cuts and bruises, and a large hunk of hair missing from her scalp.

Outraged by the beating, the Guatemalan Press Association demanded an immediate investigation, while El Impartial, a leading daily, saw it as “an attack on the freedom of expression.” But last week President Ydigoras refused to comment, and by week’s end the poker-faced Interior Ministry still dismissed the whole thing as just “a street incident.”