Will Latin America tolerate a free press?

[Commentary] Last month, one of Latin America's top journalism prizes went to a man whose only known investigative coup was a recent finding that capitalism may have destroyed life on Mars. Yes, none other than Hugo Chavez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, waltzed off with the Rodolfo Walsh Prize, given by Argentina's National University de la Plata and named after one of the 20th century's genuine martyrs to the profession.

It was hard not to suppose that the honor was promoted by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who has lately chosen to play Tonto to Chavez's neo-socialist Lone Ranger. The remains of Walsh, a heroic leftist writer and activist reportedly gunned down by the Argentine dictatorship 35 years ago, have never been found. But one assumes that wherever they are entombed, they were spinning at the idea that the man many consider today's most serious enemy of a free press in all of Latin America won a prize commemorating that very institution.