Renowned Peruvian investigative reporter battles criminalized smear campaign — and cancer

One of Latin America’s most storied journalists, Gustavo Gorriti has endured death threats from drug traffickers, survived Peru’s harrowing Shining Path insurgency and a kidnapping by silencer-toting military intelligence agents during a 1992 presidential power grab. Then an aggressive lymphatic cancer struck the 75-year-old, wasting the former five-time national judo champion’s robust physique. Diagnosed in August, Gorriti was in the final drips of two months of chemotherapy in December when a different kind of body blow landed. A smear campaign — amplified by complicit, cowed or indifferent media — portrayed the self-styled “intelligence agent for the people” as Public Enemy No. 1.