Famous Media Icons in Bolivia

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Eduardo Pérez Iribarne
A communicator and priest, originally from Spain, and naturalized Bolivian citizen. He arrived in Bolivia as en envoy for the Jesuit order four decades ago and immediately began to work in radio and television. He has been the director of Radio FIDES for over a quarter century and continues to conduct an interview and political analysis segment.

Pedro Rivero Mercado
A journalist and writer born in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. He is the founder and director of the El Deber newspaper, the largest in the country, which he founded over fifty years ago. Currently it is run by his oldest son. He is also a novelist, having published four novels to date. He was awarded the National Journalism Prize in 2010.

The Canelas Family
Journalists from Cochabamba. The father, Demetrio Canelas, founded the Los Tiempos newspaper, the largest in Cochabamba, which was later directed for over twenty years by his son, Carlos Canelas, and later by his nephew, Alfonso Canelas. Other member of the family, Jorge Canelas, was also a director of the La Razón newspaper of La Paz and later became a diplomat. The members of this family are the majority shareholders in the Grupo Líder, which controls three important national newspapers.

Carlos Palenque
A Communicator and politician born in La Paz in 1944, he became known as a musician, and later as news anchor for his own radio during the difficult dictatorial period of the 80s, when his radio was closed by the government. After democracy was restored, he founded the popular TV channel “RTP Radio Television Popular,” where he had a primetime talk show program he hosted with Remedios Loza and Adolfo Paco, with the intention of reaching out and helping the poorer segment of the population that would crowd the studio daily. That channel was also closed by the government because of a controversial interview to a drug-trafficking capo, but was reopened shortly after. This experience propelled Palenque into the political arena with good results that won for his party the government of the cities of La Paz and El Alto, but he died of natural causes before completing his nationwide political agenda in hopes of winning the presidency. He is still remembered for introducing into the country’s TV channels the “populist” style of news broadcasting and talk shows that appealed to the numerous working and middle classes, influencing amongst others the Radio Fides and the state channel TVB.

Luis Ramiro Beltrán
A journalist and writer born in Oruro in 1930, he started his career pretty early, before finishing elementary school due to encouragement from his parents, both journalists, when he started reporting for La Patria newspaper in his town. Later, he’d jump to the bigger national newspaper La Razón and would create his own weekly and a radio broadcasting station. Besides regular journalism, he also worked in the communications area for several international NGOs and the UN branches UNICEF and UNESCO, dealing with education, arts and health, and created the Escuela Crítica Latinoamericana de Comunicación think-tank. For his long and distinguished career, he’s won the Condor de los Andes Order, the highest civilian award in Bolivia, many other awards for journalism here and abroad, and the worldwide McLuhan-Teleglobe Award for journalists.

Ana María Romero de Campero
La Paz is the city where this journalist and writer was born in 1941, and where she studied Journalism at the Universidad Católica and then the San Andrés University. She first worked in El Diario newspaper as junior reporter, then for the Agencia Fides and Radio Fides belonging to the Catholic Church, until she was able to create her own weekly magazine together with her Jesuit mentor from the Fides network, which was closed by the military dictatorship of the time. She also was editor-in-chief and director of the Presencia newspaper and was editor for Semanario Pulso, as well as being international correspondent for foreign media companies such as Time, DPA, InterPress Service, and others. She won the highest award for journalism in Bolivia, and was the first People’s Advocate (Ombudsman) in Bolivia, a civilian office in charge of monitoring, investigating and defending the interests of the population against maladministration and violation of human rights by institutions and governments. She died in office as President of the Senate.

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