Mario Prada Díaz, the journalist of Sabana de Torres

July 12, 2002 was a Friday. And on that day in Los Pinos, a small town about 25 minutes from Sabana de Torres, journalist Mario Prada lay dead on a sidewalk. No one knows who fired the shots that would end the life of this enterprising journalist, who dug for information on social issues and community development in a county where, for years, the people had to witness the atrocities of war.

Prada started and directed the paper Horizonte Sabanero. He began to circulate his paper in numerous towns as his audience continued to grow. He reached Barrancabermeja, Puerto Wilches and San Alberto in the state of Cesar. He was also known for his other roles: secretary of the City Council and representative of the Patriotic Union, a left-leaning party--and thus carried the stigma of being an ally of the guerrilla.

The Barrancabermeja native had set himself apart with his journalism in a time when the military, guerrilla and paramilitaries vied for power by killing those who blocked their path. In a year when 11 journalists were killed, reporting was seen as the work of heroes. Few dared to denounce, and those who did so were followed, threatened, kidnapped or killed.

The pains of his town, Prada said, came from the way the “village chiefs” ran the administration according to their whims. He laid this out in his last editorial.

Prada Diaz, a firm believer in journalistic ethics, never let himself fall into the tempting arms of corruption. He focused on condemning the county government’s money mismanagement. In a town immersed in a conflict zone, the Horizonte Sabanero journalist pushed forward with his work, never cowering to those who believed ethics was merely a theoretical concept.

Prada was in his office for the last time on July 11, 2002.  No one saw him after he left work, until his body was found strewn on the side of the road the next day. He had numerous gunshot wounds to the head. He was the second journalist to be killed in less than a month. The town Sabana de Torres wept because someone had silenced a voice of the people.

No investigation has been able to identify those responsible for Prada’s death. The case isn’t closed, but was suspended July 25, 2003 because no one could be identified.

As with many other cases in Colombia, Mario Prada Diaz’s killing continues in impunity, After 13 years there has not been an advance significant enough to let the people of Sabana de Torres know what happened with the journalist. The nearly 15,000 residents of the county of Santander were left without the monthly information Horizonte Sabanero provided them.  With Prada’s death, the newspaper ended too. But the people remember it as a paper concerned with social development in one of the many towns that suffered at the hands of the guerrilla and corruption.

Mario Prada Díaz is remembered as a journalist committed to his work until his last days--one who never cracked under the pressure of those in Colombia who wished to silence the press.